A Madwoman with a Box
by tempusername
Summary: Warehouse 13 meets the Whoniverse. When Secret Service agent Myka Bering is brought to Cardiff by a mysterious organization known as the Torchwood Institute, she writes off their pitch as a nonsensical prank. Aliens? In Cardiff? Nonsense. But after storming out of the briefing, she runs into the strangest woman she's ever me. (Hiatus due to broken laptop.)
1. 1: A Dark and Stormy Night

**A/N: **_Happy AU Week! This story takes part in 21 chapters, which is divided into seven "episodes," one of which will be posted each day of AU Week - if I can finish up the last ones by the end of the week, anyway. (In true Doctor Who style, there may be a Christmas "episode" coming up later on, and there may be another seven "episodes" come January. No promises.)_

* * *

A chant of _cold cold cold _played in her head as she walked, but that was the epitome of an understatement. This night was far beyond the confines of "cold." It was enough to chill her to the bone, but not quite enough to turn the icy drizzle to soft flakes, accompanied by a harsh wind. Myka didn't think that she had ever been this cold in her entire life.

But it was November in Cardiff, and the weather was only to be expected. The past two nights had been equally dreary, and even before that, being out late was usually accompanied by a spot of rain and a freezing wind. Most of the city was wise enough to stay inside at such an hour. The weather was long familiar to them. When it came to this recent migrant from the States, however, the shiver that ran through her was not from the chill. She was new to these Cardiff nights, the Colorado cold of her youth long absent from her memory after years as a Secret Service agent in D.C., and on top of that, she had the active imagination of a reader. For someone like her, there was something romantic in the walk. Even as the curses flew from her lips when the wind picked up and even as she turned up the collar of her coat, wool heavy with rain, she couldn't help but feel delighted by the sheer misery of it.

Straight out of Dickens, she decided, stopping beneath a flickering streetlight to bend and press her hands beneath her thighs in a futile attempt to warm them. But a rainy walk home late at night was the only Dickensian thing in her life right now. Even an author known for such a penchant for torturing his characters could never have imagined a life as disoriented as hers, she thought, not without a touch of bitterness. Once more, just like every night she made the too-long walk from the police station to her apartment, her thoughts turned to the tumult of the past month. There was little room in her head lately to dwell on anything else.

Myka Bering was a woman of principle. She never slouched. She never slacked. She was a woman who set her mind to a goal and accomplished it, and anyone who interfered simply didn't stand a chance. When she had decided she should be serving at the White House, the world had followed along. She flew up the ladder until the top rung was nearly in her grasp, a brief and brilliant start to a career. Her future had unfolded before her—and it was a perfect, fulfilling future, the one she had dreamt of for as long as she could remember. She had faced struggles and tragedy, but finally, things had fallen into place.

Yet only recently, that future had been dashed.

"I'm here to extend an invitation to endless wonder," the mysterious woman had said, voice rising smoothly from the shadows of Myka's living room. There had been no debate. The invitation had been a command. In less than twelve hours, she had been on the plane to Cardiff, seated next to equally bewildered fellow agent Pete Lattimer.

An apartment was provided for them, outfitted with peeling wallpaper and unusually low ceilings that forced the tall Myka to duck when she moved from room to room. A manila folder had sat on the coffee table, and at Pete's prodding, Myka had opened it and read the top sheet aloud. They were to report for temporary duty at the local police station while things were settled. More information would be following shortly, the paper claimed. Myka had wadded it up and tossed it in the trash before stalking to her room and dropping onto the bed, which let loose a loud wheeze and cloud of dust when she first sat on it.

After days in Cardiff and countless calls to D.C. in an effort to be transferred back, she had resigned herself to the new location, and she was almost (almost) enjoying it. She had no idea what the United States government was doing sending agents to a small outpost in Cardiff, but there were worse places to be. She'd only left the United States once, and that had been a weekend spent with her parents and sister in the middle of a sweaty tour group in London. This was different. Her loud insistences to Pete on the plane that she detested traveling were washed away as she acclimated to the new culture. And, she supposed, having a job with significantly less stress helped too. The removal of pressure was a miracle cure for many an ailment, spiritual or physical, as she had discovered. Though a thorn still pricked at her heart, insisting this must be some form of punishment, Myka had gradually embraced the situation.

But the moment she'd decided she was adjusted, the strange woman had appeared once more. This time she had introduced herself as Mrs. Frederic, though Pete and Myka were both too busy staring at her open-mouthed and wondering how she had gotten in to the apartment to pay attention to her introduction. She'd smiled, inquired as to how they were enjoying Cardiff, and shot ahead without waiting for an answer.

"Now that you have been given time to settle, we must proceed," she had said. "You won't be spending much more time at the station. Torchwood needs you as soon as possible."

The staring had continued, Pete still agape, Myka's face contorting into a suspicious frown. She was familiar with every aspect of the Secret Service, an expert on both history and modern practice, and she had never heard of Torchwood before. Mrs. Frederic had offered only the briefest explanation of the Torchwood Institute, promising them that their work would be very important but that they would learn more when they reported for duty on Monday. Then she had vanished, as they'd discovered was her disconcerting habit.

That had been Friday evening. Now, it was Sunday night—no, she realized with a glance at her watch, it was Monday morning already. After only a painfully few hours of sleep, she and Pete would head to find out what exactly Torchwood was to merit having yanked them away from their lives in D.C. Some sort of special forces, she had determined, but it was hard to tell much more than that. There was no information online, and when she'd called her former supervisor to demand an explanation, he had been as oblivious about the organization as she was.

Myka sighed as she resolutely plowed through the rain. Her apartment had come into view and the romantic appeal of a rainy walk had worn off to leave only the unhappiness. Her squeaky, wobbly bed now sounded like a dream come true.

In the time it took Myka to cross the street towards her apartment, the weather shifted, changing in a single moment. The rain elevated from an unpleasant drizzle to an unbearable torrent, soft droplets turning into a mixture of rain and ice, and a sudden gust almost blew her off her feet. It had been cold before, but now it was absolutely freezing. She cried out as she staggered in the force of the wind. The sound was ripped away, inaudible in the storm.

If it had been midday, she could have looked up to see a swirl of black clouds gathering over the city, and she could have watched as the dark mass spread out across the sky. She could have stared in shock at the odd phenomenon and trembled in dismay.

But it was half past one and the sky was masked with night, so instead she kept her eyes fixed firmly on the building she struggled towards.

The door swung open with a shriek, rusty hinges howling along with the wind that pushed the door back against the wall. A bedraggled Myka pushed it shut, leaning there for a moment as she sucked in breaths of warm air. She stamped her feet on the ground, closing her eyes in relief as feeling returned to her digits. With a growing sense of warmth, she made her way up the stairs, a trail of dripping rainwater left behind her.

It was with great caution that she slid her key into the lock, and she closed the door behind her tenderly. She turned around, prepared to creep back to her room, when he spoke.

"Hey! It's late. _Late_-late. I thought you just meant normal-late."

Myka gasped and nearly stumbled. "Pete! What does that mea—I was trying not to wa—why are you awake? I told you to go to bed early." Her apologetic tone turned accusatory and she frowned at him as she tugged off her soaked coat.

He shrugged, sprawled out on the ratty couch with his feet hanging over the edge. "I wanted to make sure you got here okay. I don't want to have my partner vanish right before we dive into this 'endless wonder,' you know?"

She squinted at him in the darkness. Deciding it was well-intentioned, she smiled at him as she pushed limp wet curls out of her face. "Thank you for the thought. But we need to sleep. It's going to be an early morning."

"Geez, Mom," he sighed, clambering to his feet. He stuck his tongue out and her smile turned into a frown. "You look awful. Total mess," he added as he rose, and the remainder of her moment of fondness for him vanished.

"It's _raining_," she snapped. A several-mile walk in this weather did not leave her predisposed to kindness, and even on the best days, Pete had to press her buttons.

"Girl, you are rocking that drowning victim chic," he teased, grin flashing even in the dimly lit room. She made sure to shake her wet head as she walked past him, accompanied by a sharp-tongued admonishment that chic sounded ridiculous a noun, and she allowed herself a pleased smile as he groaned about the spray of cold water.

Half a month together and they still clashed more often than not. When they'd worked together in D.C., things had been similar. Myka wanted order and color-coded plans. Pete wanted to go with his gut. Myka wanted everything taken seriously. Pete wanted to make sure he never missed a chance for a laugh. Spending time together fully brought out the contrast. They'd spent the entire flight to Cardiff arguing as Pete tried to show Myka all of the strangest and funniest items in the SkyMall magazine. She'd been ready to strangle him with the cord of her headphones, or perhaps beat him over the head with the novel she had been trying to read. Arriving at the apartment had been just as bad. While Myka had looked around in dismay at their shabby quarters, Pete had crowed and jumped on the couch, ratcheting her headache up another notch. She'd claimed the largest bed in revenge and he'd proceeded to sulk about it for the rest of the day.

Nearly every day had included similar instances. They bickered constantly, the situation only exacerbated by close quarters. In the Secret Service, they'd interacted only when necessary. Here, sharing an apartment and work hours, it was harder to avoid conflict.

Yet he did things like wait up for her when she needed to stay late at the station. He was her closest—her only—friend in Cardiff, as absurd as it seemed to her. He was kind-hearted and perhaps not as foolish as he acted. And, she thought, glancing at him over her shoulder as she walked towards the bathroom and a hot shower, she would have to keep learning to live with him. Tomorrow came a new job. _The_ job, whatever it was. He would have to learn to like color-coded plans, she decided. She was not doing things his way.

She slipped from her reverie as she entered the bathroom. Myka had never been so eager for a shower. She turned the water on the second she shut the door, letting it start to heat up as she peeled off her soaked clothing. Her shirt felt as flimsy as a rag; her jeans were leaden.

The water hissed as it hit her still-chilled skin. She turned her face up to the hot flow, delight coursing through her at the warmth. Myka always carried herself with great rigidity, and only in the safety of her shower did she let the tension run out of her and down the drain. Twisting and turning in the water occupied her, and the strange weather of earlier was forgotten as the water pounded down and lulled her into a deep comfort. It was only when her skin was flushed red with heat that she stepped out into the steamy room, lifting a towel from the rack to wrap around herself.

One hand holding the towel firm, she opened the door—and was greeted by Pete's eager face.

"Oh my God!" She pushed past him furiously, striding towards her room. Like clockwork, every time she had a kind thought towards Pete, he did something new and maddening. "Have you been there the whole time?"

"No, no! I just remembered I wanted to talk to you about tomorrow." He followed her, only thwarted when she slammed the door to her bedroom between them. It only slowed him for a second. "Can I come in?"

"Pete, I am dressing!"

He was persistent. "Can we talk through the door?"

Myka groaned, a baggy t-shirt half pulled over her head. "I want to sleep. I don't want to talk. We'll find everything out in the morning." Truth be told, she was as nervous about the next day as he was, but cornering her right after a shower was not the right way to win a conversation from Myka.

"I just want to discuss what's going down tomorrow! Where are we going? What are we doing? Why is everyone being so spooky about it?"

"Read the file," she told him, the same thing she had told him every day since they had arrived. As far as she could tell, Pete was not particularly fond of reading. It was infuriating for her, a child who had grown up in a bookstore, which only seemed to strengthen his resolve to avoid the file.

"But I don't want to, it's—"

"Pete!" She swung the door open, now fully clad in her pajamas. She smacked him with the damp towel, pleased with his exaggerated expression of pain and the subsequent loud complaint. "I don't know anything more about the Torchwood Institute than you do. All I know is that there's no way to get out of this, God knows I've tried. Whatever's going to happen is going to happen no matter what. So just try to sleep. Or at least be quiet while I sleep."

He pulled a face and she shut the door again. She waited, and when she heard his footsteps retreating down the hall, she sighed with relief and finally fell into the bed she had looked forward to all evening. Soon they would find out what Torchwood was and why they had been sent there. Soon, perhaps things would start to make sense. Now, however, it was time for a few meager hours of sleep.

Myka Bering closed her eyes and drifted off.

It would be the last normal night she would ever be able to remember.


	2. 2: The Hub

Morning came too quickly. Myka, normally swift to rise, awoke rubbing bleary eyes and groaning at the light filtering through her window. A glance at the clock only deepened her frown. It was six in the morning, a mere four hours after she had fallen to sleep. She was cutting things impossibly close: They were to be at the Torchwood Institute at 6:45. It was with the greatest reluctance that she pulled herself from the warm confines of her bed.

Still half asleep, she stumbled to her closet, pulling out a pair of dark pants and a pale blue top, both nearly identical to what she had worn the day before. She buttoned the shirt as she left the room, pausing to pound on Pete's door and shout out a wake-up call before she continued in her routine.

By the time Pete emerged, yawning and still dressed in only a t-shirt and boxers, Myka was wiping the crumbs off her fingers from a piece of unbuttered toast. She sighed when he entered. "Pete, get dressed. We only have ten minutes."

He mumbled a response and turned back towards his room, shuffling away. Hands on her hips, Myka watched him go. "Speed up!" she called. He only moaned a complaint about how bossy she was, and she rolled her eyes. Predictable.

Myka checked her watch, and, dissatisfied with its claim, she checked the clock. It was equally disappointing, and she fidgeted as she waited for Pete. If she was bossy, it was only because he was incompetent, she decided. If this was to be her new job, she was not going to make a poor first impression. Setting the alarm so late had been her fault, admittedly, but she wasn't to blame for being held late at the station the previous night. The city was coping with an odd chain of car crashes, all seemingly unrelated but far beyond the usual volume, and, when no one else seemed bothered by the unusual numbers, she'd put herself in charge of searching for a reason behind the new accidents. Surely whoever was in charge at the Torchwood Institute would understand the demands of work. And yet—if Pete made them late—

He reappeared. Myka cringed; the buttons on his shirt were mismatched, leaving his shirt lopsided. It was too late now to correct him, though. She ordered him out the door, all but dragging him when he tried to stop to dig through the fridge. He was older than she was, but she felt more like his babysitter every day.

Only a few people walked the streets this morning. One harried man in an ill-fitting suit pushed past them, muttering to himself, and a young woman stood on a corner, looking about vaguely. The city slept on. Pete was waking up gradually, which was a mixed blessing. He no longer insisted on the zombie walk of earlier, but silence was once more out of his reach. A thousand questions or quips seemed to fly out of his mouth every second. Myka smacked him in the arm but it only silenced him for a minute.

The six miles between their apartment and their destination passed agonizingly slowly. The walk to Fairwater was twenty minutes and the train to Cardiff Central was ten, followed by another nearly twenty minute walk after, leaving them almost an hour behind schedule. Myka was furious, but with herself instead of Pete. She had to admit that her planning had been unusually poor. There was no possible way they could have woken up at six and arrived in time, not when the earliest train left at 7:10. They needed a car. Surely the Institute had saved enough money on that dirty apartment, which Myka had noted was far more sparse and shoddy than any of the others in the building , to afford to provide them with a vehicle. She wondered how one went about filing a complaint with Mrs. Frederic. Actually, she wondered how one made any contact whatsoever with Mrs. Frederic.

But, finally, here they were. Myka stopped; Pete nearly bumped into her. "What is it?" he yelped, struggling to catch his balance. He looked around. They stood at the edge of Roald Dahl Plass, nearly empty this morning, with only a few scattered figures standing in the vast space. The fountain across from them glinted in the soft morning light.

"It's the plaza," Myka answered absently, brow furrowed in thought and confusion. The address in the file had simply read _beneath Roald Dahl Plass_. She'd assumed it would make sense upon arrival, but this was arrival, and she still wasn't sure how it made sense. The last time she'd been in the basin had been weeks before for a food and wine festival, dragged along by Pete. "Wine for you and food for me, we can split the ticket!" he'd exclaimed, begging her to accompany him; at that point, still furious about the transfer, nothing had sounded less appealing than time shared in close company with Pete, but she'd attended to scope out the plaza. That hadn't yielded any answers.

"What, is someone going to meet us here? We're way late. Maybe they think we're not coming. We should call 'em."

"Yes, Pete, I'll just call them. Of course I have the phone number of the top secret government institute I've been told nothing more about than their name. I might not know the identity of anyone involved other that Mrs. Frederic, if that's even her name, but I have each employee on speed dial." She scowled as she surveyed the plaza, not deigning to give him even a glance.

Pete crossed his eyes and puffed his cheeks out, making a face at the back of her head. "How do you walk straight with that stick so far up—"

Myka whirled around, prepared to yell at him. In the same instant, Pete felt a tap on his shoulder and spun around with a shout.

An American accent rang out, the first they had heard in their brief time in the city. "Hello! Lattimer and Bering!"

Myka sputtered. Pete gaped. They were thoroughly caught off guard, both appalled to be seen in the middle of their bickering.

A short, squat man stood there, unclipping a sunglasses attachment from his spectacles. He wore a heavy, long brown coat, and the rest of his outfit worked with it to create an impressively unstylish earthy ensemble. His graying hair was unkempt; a pen was tucked behind his ear. All in all, he looked nothing like what Myka had been expecting. He must be from Torchwood, if he knew their names, but…she swallowed, embarrassed to admit to herself that she had been picturing much more of a James Bond-type fellow. All the secrecy and drama just to be met by a man who looked like an eccentric professor? After the mystery of Mrs. Frederic, she couldn't believe it.

"Pete Lattimer and Myka Bering, correct? Captain Arthur Nielsen. You can call me Artie. You're extremely late. I made cookies but they'll be cold."

At that, Pete perked up, his nervousness suddenly gone. "Cookies? What kind of cookies?"

Before Artie could respond, Myka stepped forward. "Hello, Captain Nielsen. Are you from the Torchwood Institute? I apologize for our delay. We had some difficulties last night, thanks to the weather, and the instructions said to go beneath the plaza, which simply didn't make any sense. It must have been a misprint. Someone at your organization is sending out ridiculous information. Are you…." She trailed off. He was staring at her, bushy eyebrows lifted expectantly.

When she didn't speak again, Artie clapped his hands together and turned to Pete. "Snickerdoodles. Family recipe. Come on, let's hop on the lift and get down to the Hub. We have to make up for lost time."

"Get down where?" Myka demanded, thoroughly confused. She couldn't restrain herself any longer. She had to know: "Who are you, exactly? You aren't in charge here, are you?"

He snorted with laughter as he led then across the plaza. "Me, not in charge here? As if anyone else could do it."

Myka flushed, and he turned around to eye her. Artie paused for a long moment, mouth open and hands steepled beneath his chin, looking between the two agents. When he spoke, his gaze was fixed on Myka. "Actually, I don't believe we'll be taking the lift today. Don't want to give you a stroke on your first day."

"It's only an elevator," she said, frowning. Her embarrassment didn't prevent her irritation from flashing out again. "I am perfectly capable of riding an elevator to…the _Hub_, whatever that is." She looked at Pete, hoping for solidarity, but he only rolled his eyes.

"Not today, you aren't. Soon. We'll go in through the tourism office. This way, please!"

She was silent for the rest of their walk across the plaza, two steps behind the men. Pete was eagerly interrogating Artie on his cookies, and Artie was having a grand time withholding any further details from enthusiastic Pete. First the lateness, and now she'd managed to offend the admittedly odd leader of the organization enough to be banned from simply riding the elevator.

It was a long walk to the office.

"The sign says closed," she ventured, speaking for the first time when they arrived. The building was dilapidated and only a dim light emanated from inside.

Artie turned to peer at her, pushing up his glasses. "Yes, well, that's for _other_ people. We don't always follow the rules."

Pete laughed and rubbed his hands together, shooting a look at Myka. "Oh, she'll hate that. She's all about the rules. Look at her squirming."

As Myka yelled at Pete and he protested back, Artie looked askance at the two of them, his brow wrinkled in concentration. "Interesting," he mumbled, too quiet for them to hear. "Hm. Hope this isn't a mistake." With another grumble and a shake of his head, he opened the door and beckoned them in.

A young woman stood at the counter, an ancient computer and a stack of brochures in front of her and a map of the world on the wall behind her. She was absently flicking through a stack of papers, but she looked up with a huge smile when they stepped in. "Artie! Looks like you finally found them. Welcome!"

"This is Leena, our general support officer," Artie explained. "Leena, this is Lattimer and Bering."

"I know." She smiled warmly, stepping out from behind the counter. "I'm familiar with their files. Will you be going down?"

"Please," Artie said, and as he guided Myka and Pete across the room, a segment of the wall opened up.

Pete stammered something unintelligible, and Myka whispered an awed, "Oh, my God." What had previously been an ugly faux-stone segment of the wall, a metal file full of brochures hung on it, now opened up into a passageway.

"In we go," Artie said, ignoring the sudden barrage of questions that poured from both Pete and Myka. "Let's go meet the whole gang."

Later, Myka would have no memory of the short walk into the Hub. She wouldn't even remember her first entrance into the visitor center. All she would be able to recall would be the overwhelming sense of awe when the door rolled back and the gate opened, the sudden struggle to remain on her feet, and the disbelieving look she exchanged with Pete. That was the moment in which she knew that this was not a normal job transfer.

He grabbed her wrist. She didn't yank it away. "Dude," Pete said

"Yeah," she whispered. "I guess we aren't in Kansas any more."

Pete mumbled something about not wanting to be Toto, but neither of them had the strength to continue the jest. They were too busy soaking in the room.

The room was large, all steel and concrete, full of bright screens and buzzing, indiscernible machines. A maze of cords covered the floor. Everything looked mind-bogglingly high-tech, as if it was pulled straight out of a science-fiction movie, but it was equally messy..

"Is that—," Pete began. He suddenly looked queasy. "Is that a hand?"

Myka followed his gaze and covered her mouth in shock. "That's a hand!"

"Don't worry about the hand!" Artie said. "Come on! Keep it moving!"

Pete elbowed Myka. "That's definitely a hand," he hissed.

"I know," she answered him in a fierce whisper, eyes darting to the hand. There were no hands floating in jars in their D.C. office. No hands in jars at the Cardiff police station they'd been working at. In fact, Myka could say with absolute certainty that she had never shared a workspace with a preserved hand. She hadn't known what to expect from Torchwood, but this was already stranger than she could have imagined.

"Hey, the newbies are here!" A redheaded girl came dashing down the spiral stairs at a breakneck speed, hopping over the railing and skipping the last several steps. A young man followed her more sedately. Both of them were dressed casually, the young woman in ripped jeans and a bright vest covered with buttons and the man in a navy sweater and jeans. To Myka's eyes, they both appeared too young and too unprofessional to belong in a high-level organization, but—she looked over at disheveled Artie, then back to the two new arrivals—apparently Torchwood was not what she had thought it was. She'd spent every day since her arrival in Cardiff trying to convince herself that this transfer was a promotion, but her work was shattered. It felt very much like a demotion as she stood in that cluttered room and stared at the two people in front of her. If it wasn't for the strange tech around her, she would have been sure it was all a bad dream.

"Claudia Donovan, computer specialist." The redhead had the widest grin Myka had ever seen, and she couldn't help but smile weakly back as they shook hands.

"And Steve Jinks, fill-in medical officer." He nodded politely in lieu of a handshake, hands behind his back. His smile was more tempered, but kind. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but Myka sensed empathy from him. She wondered if he too had been taken aback when he first arrived at Torchwood.

Claudia had enough energy for the both of them, Myka thought, extracting her hand from the girl's grip, watching as she moved on to Pete with the same enthusiasm. She seemed so young, far too young for her job.

"This is our current staff," Artie said, breaking into her thoughts. She looked up at him. "It's been the three of us and Leena for some time now. You and Pete will round the team back out again."

"Speaking of Pete, Pete hungry. Cookies?" He was wide-eyed and hopeful, patting his stomach. Claudia laughed at his comment; Myka only sighed.

"Yes, yes, we'll get to the cookies. Ah—Steve, will you go fetch some of the snickerdoodles? Perhaps warm them since our two agents took so long to arrive?"

Steve acquiesced, trotting across the room, and Artie looked to Pete and Myka. "Why don't we go into my office for an overview of things, and we'll let Claudia and Steve prepare something to tell you about their jobs afterwards? How does that sound?" He instructed Claudia to send Steve to his office with the cookies, and he began to walk Myka and Pete to the left side of the Hub.

"We've got bathrooms over there behind the stairs. This is our desk area, as you can tell," Artie explained as they walked. "Right now it's just Claudia out here. Hers is that one with all the screens. You two will take the empty ones. We keep Steve busy over here. That's his lab. He'll show you that later. The morgue is at the other end, and he's in there sometimes too."

"The morgue?" Myka's eyebrows shot up. "What on Earth…what do you do here? What kind of facility is this?"

"A complicated one. Here's my office. Please, take a seat."

Somewhere in the middle of Artie's following speech, Steve came in and dropped off the cookies, but even Pete was listening too intently to reach for one. No matter how slowly Artie explained things, it still would have been too fast. Like Mrs. Frederic had said, he explained that Torchwood was a special forces unit of sorts. This was the only current branch of Torchwood, he told them, though it had once been a widespread organization, and they were now "renegade, in a sense." They were under the radar, he continued, not officially affiliated with the government, though they would occasionally work with government officials: "Separate from the government, outside the police, and beyond the United Nations." Apparently they liked to recruit agents from the United States to build a more globalized approach (Myka started to point out that every person here had an American accent, which didn't seem very globalized to her, but she held her tongue). It was unusual. It was frustrating for the by-the-books Myka. But it was absolutely nothing compared to the second half of his speech.

"Now, it's about to get odd, but hold with me here. Our prime directive is to defend Earth against alien threats. There's a rift in time and space that runs through Cardiff, so it's our mission to monitor it. Things are going to come through. We're going to stop them. Aliens themselves, technology, who knows what else." He looked at Pete and Myka. Myka had gone white as a ghost, and Pete couldn't close his mouth. He smiled. "It's all pretty straightforward, really. You'll see."

"No." Myka rose, shaking her head slowly. She began to back away towards the door of Artie's office. The last remnants of her acceptance towards the whole situation in Cardiff snapped. Working at the station might have been a terrible demotion, but at least it had been tangible. This was the furthest thing from that. It was some kind of joke. "No. This is—this is absurd. This is ridiculous. I don't know what the hell is going on but I'm not supposed to be here. You're a lunatic."

A worried Pete pushed himself to his feet. "C'mon, Myka…you aren't giving him a chance."

"A chance to what? Prove aliens are flying into Cardiff through a hole in time? Of course I'm not giving him a chance! Seriously, Lattimer, you are seriously crazy if you think this is serious. I'm out of here. I'm sorry, but I will not stay here another second. I'm taking the first flight back to Washington."

She spun on her heel and walked swiftly across the room. Pete started to rush after her, but Artie caught his arm. "It's alright," the older man said. He was gruff, but his eyes were gentle. "She'll come back if she belongs here. Stay and I'll offer you the proof she refuses to look at."

Pete hesitated, watching as Myka retreated, but he finally turned back to Artie. "Okay. Show me what you've got."

Claudia was lounging in her desk chair when Myka strode past her. She shot up, startled. "Hey! What's going on?"

Myka didn't answer. She only sped up her pace. Claudia fell back in her chair, dismay flickering across her face. Steve, across the Hub, rubbed the back of his neck as he watched the agent leave. Claudia looked at him with wide eyes. He only shrugged.

When she burst through the tourism office, Leena reached out to her with warm platitudes, but Myka pushed past her and out of the door, slamming it behind her. The plaza was more active than it had been when they'd arrived earlier. She moved roughly through the crowds, shouldering past everyone who made the mistake of standing in her way. Her mind was whirring, a mess of frustration and anger and disappointment.

She was so caught up in thought that at first she didn't notice the woman waiting to cross the road beside her. When the light changed, she still stood there, running through a list of what she might have done wrong at work to deserve a punishment like being sent to Torchwood.

It was only when she heard a surprised "Oh!" ring out that she looked up to see a car barreling towards the woman in the middle of the road. Adrenaline pushed Torchwood from her mind. She sprung into action, long legs propelling her towards the motionless woman as the car sped ever closer. Bracing herself for pain, she dove forward in a mad tackle.

They both crashed into the pavement. In another blink, the car tore past where the woman had stood less than a second before. Myka gasped for breath and rolled to the side, off of the woman she'd knocked down. The woman propped herself up on a bleeding elbow, bringing the necklace that had been flung around her neck back to the front with her free hand. She was coughing, but she stared at Myka with great interest. Myka stared back. The woman was unusually beautiful, almost out of place. Admiring an attractive woman wasn't nearly the most unusual thing she'd been through that day, though, and she quickly pushed that away.

The woman had a cascade of black hair, elegant and disheveled all at once, eyes equally dark, and bright lips that Myka found her gaze fixated on. A scrape on her cheek and one on her chin oozed blood where she had hit the street. Myka wiped her hands on her jeans before pushing herself to her knees and offering a hand to the other woman, who accepted. Her grip was firm and warm, and Myka let go with a strange reluctance when they were both on their feet.

"I suppose you've saved my life," the woman said, a smile playing on her lips. "Painfully, but saved nonetheless."

"You're bleeding."

The woman touched her face, grimacing as she pulled her fingers away bloody. "Yes, well, that _is_ a shame, but it's less than I would be otherwise. Still in one piece, no?" Her smile switched from veiled to bright, and tucked her hands in the pocket of her coat. "I'll heal up nicely."

Myka frowned in the direction the car had gone, distracted from the woman's smile as she examined the skid mark on the road. She spoke more to herself than to the woman. "There's been the strangest string of car accidents. Always in the middle of the day, always at a stoplight. Record numbers for Cardiff. I've been looking into it and that's as much of a pattern as I can gather, but it fits this."

"Oh! You've been following them too? That happens to be exactly what brings me to Cardiff!"

"What? Really?" Myka turned her frown to the woman, who was still smiling cheerfully at her. She was the only person in the police force who had cared enough to put a second of thought into these accidents. She couldn't believe that someone had come to the city solely for them. The thoughts of Torchwood were completely pushed from her head as she seized on this information. "Do you know anything more about them? I have a few ideas but not much to go on."

She laughed, and, linking her arm with Myka's, led her the rest of the way across the street. "I don't think you'll believe me if I tell you. Let me show you?" The questioning tone that entered her voice bordered on bashful, and though she had a feeling it was an act, Myka nodded quickly to reassure her.

"Of course! I want to see anything you have! The more details the better."

"Splendid. You know, I don't believe I got your name; you were a bit too busy tackling me."

"Agent Myka Bering. United States Secret Service. I have a badge but you've got a grip on my arm, so I can't exactly pull it out. And you?" Myka finally smiled, and the woman smiled back.

"I believe you. No badge necessary." She turned down a side street. "I'm the Doctor."

Myka cocked a brow at the odd answer. "The Doctor?"

"My friends just call me Doctor," she replied, a teasing lilt raising her voice.

"Doctor?" Myka waited. She gave it a second shot. "Doctor…?"

The woman didn't respond, staring ahead as they took another turn. Myka tried again, fishing desperately. "Doctor _what_?"

Laughing, a bright and musical laugh, the woman turned down another street. It was a dead end, empty except for a dumpster on the left side and a tall, faded blue box on the right side.

"Oh, so close! So close! You almost said it! Everyone always says it!"


	3. 3: Time and Relative Dimension in Space

"No, nothing afterwards. Just the Doctor."

Myka stared at this strange woman, this woman who called herself simply the Doctor, who claimed to have come to Cardiff simply to study car accidents—

And she shook her head wearily and accepted it, for the moment. "It's nice to meet you, Doctor."

"And you, Agent Bering."

"If I hadn't had such a weird day already, I'd think you were crazy. Refusing to give me a real name isn't so strange after a man's been telling me there are aliens in Cardiff, though." Myka smiled, but it faded when an odd light entered the Doctor's eyes.

"You don't believe in aliens?" the Doctor asked. Her voice was tinged with amusement and something else Myka couldn't place. The Doctor came to a stop, extracting her arm from Myka's to rest her hands on her hips.

Myka shrugged, embarrassed without knowing why, shifting her weight from foot to foot. "It's plausible that there might be single-celled organisms out there, especially with some of our recent developments, but I don't think there's sentient life."

The Doctor laughed her clear, musical laugh. She resumed her walk with a playful jump of a step, Myka following behind her. "Oh, Agent Bering, I think we'll have fun together."

A bemused Myka followed her down the alley until they came to a halt by the tall, dusty blue box. The door was wooden, with brown peeking out from behind peeling paint. The top of the box read _Police Public Call Box_. Myka was familiar with the concept of a public police telephone. The earliest had been installed in the late 1800s, and they'd been phased out with the invention of radios and walkie-talkies. There was absolutely no logical reason why one should be in Cardiff in the modern day. She wrinkled her nose as she stared at the anachronism.

The Doctor hopped forward to grab the handle, looking expectantly at Myka. "Welcome to as close as I've got to home, sweet home."

Sudden horror flashed through Myka, and full-fledged paranoia kicked in. The woman wasn't simply eccentric, she was insane, some sort of tramp living in a run-down police box. She took a step backwards, firing a desperate glance over her shoulder at the distant exit of the alley, but when she turned back, she stopped in her tracks. The Doctor was dressed well, if simply, in dark jeans, high boots, a thin pale blue shirt, and a long brown coat. A lovely necklace, perhaps a locket, hung around her neck. She looked nothing at all like a lunatic living in a box. More than that, though, she had a smile that Myka longed to trust, and the moment she registered the Doctor still fixing her with that smile, she moved back towards her. It was silly, it was foolish, and she couldn't help it. There was something so irresistibly strange about this woman, and Myka was going to do her best to figure it out.

"Okay. Let's see this box of yours," Myka said, lifting her arms in defeat.

The Doctor swung the door open, gesturing for Myka to enter. Myka froze. The door didn't open to the dusty, stark insides of a public call box. The insides shone copper, and the far wall seemed to curve in a dome.

"What the hell…?" Myka began, but the Doctor cried out encouragement to urge her on, and Myka stepped over the threshold. The Doctor shut the door behind her.

She looked around in disbelief. It was only when the Doctor placed a hand on the small of her back that Myka realized she had been close to falling. She felt distant from her body, distant from the whole world.

The room was massive, organic and futuristic all at once. Thick, strange vines climbed up the sides of the curved walls. An oval apparatus in the center of the room was covered with knobs, buttons, and screens, and a soft hum emanated from the glowing blue tube that rose from the central oval into the ceiling. It was distinctly _not_ the size of a police box.

She stammered out something jumbled and nonsensical, eyes fixed on the high ceiling. The Doctor squeezed her shoulder reassuringly before moving to the middle of the room, holding out her arms in welcome. "This is the TARDIS! Or the console room of the TARDIS, at any rate. There are other rooms but we won't really be using them for our current objective."

Myka took a trembling step forward. "It's…"

"Bigger on the inside? Yes, I've heard that before," the Doctor sighed.

"…much less 1970s than I expected," she finished, managing a wry smile despite her queasiness. The smile wavered and she fought to maintain it.

The Doctor clapped her hands together. "Oh, look at you, avoiding all the clichés! It's really more sixties, but I'll let it pass because I'm so pleased. I like you already, Agent Bering."

Myka took another step closer, stepping up to the dais. "You haven't drugged me, have you? Where—what—where am I?"

Her tone was kind enough to feel nearly condescending. "It's the TARDIS, darling. I know it can be startling at first, but you'll—"

"What on Earth is a TARDIS?"

The Doctor paced the floor, hands behind her back. "What a perfect turn of phrase. 'What on Earth.' Well, it's not particularly simple to explain. I don't think you'll believe me at first, in all honesty, but I hope I'll get to prove it to you. I do think I'll quite enjoy working with you as we proceed with this investigation."

Myka's initial shock was quickly wearing off to be replaced with irritation. She had reached her limit of daily frustration. No one was giving her any answers today, and she did _not_ operate without answers. Her years as a Secret Service agent had taught her that there was one method of getting answers far more efficient than any other: In one swift motion, she seized the other woman by the shoulders and shoved her back against the blue console. "I haven't decided that you aren't crazy enough for me to not report you to god-knows-who yet. Do not talk nonsense at me for another second. You're going to answer my questions quickly and accurately until this makes sense."

"Oh, dear. I always forget you government agents are such a different sort." The Doctor's eyes were wide, but she didn't look surprised. With a trace of her former smile, she reached up to grab Myka's shoulders in a mirror image. "I don't suppose you'll let me up; this isn't especially comfortable. No? Alright, ask swiftly. I _so_ hate a sore back."

Myka swallowed hard, throat tight with a sudden wave of anger. It was rare for her to lose herself so rashly. Still, this wasn't a typical day. Shame and pride kept her hands firmly on the Doctor, holding her against the console. "This is a police box on the outside. It is…not a police box on the inside. What is it?"

At that Myka tightened her hold on the Doctor, who grimaced. "The TARDIS is what you would imagine as a time machine, only that's not quite right. It's an acronym for Time and Relative Dimension in Space."

"You have a time machine? You have a time machine that looks like a police box? Excuse me if I have a hard time believing that."

The Doctor sighed. "Well, I did warn you that you might not believe me. She only looks like a police box because the chameleon circuit broke ages ago, and I'm too fond of the look now to try and fix it."

Myka stared at her, not comprehending what she was saying. "But a time machine. A time machine."

"Yes, of a sort. A TT Type 40 Mark 3 TARDIS, which I admit is outdated, but she has many an enhancement designed by yours truly. I fancy myself a bit of an inventor, you see. Though I suppose technical specifications don't mean anything to you." The Doctor squirmed in her hold, uncomfortable and antsy.

"They don't. Where did you acquire a time machine, if—only hypothetically!—that's what this is?"

"I stole her, or she stole me. Before you ask: From a museum on Gallifrey. And, again before you ask: My home planet. Which means what you think it does."

Myka licked her dry lips. If she wasn't standing in a room that defied physics, she would dismiss this without a second thought. Here, though, a second thought was demanded…and then a third and fourth after that. She was intelligent enough to know it wasn't a dream, but she desperately wished it was. Nothing had ever made less sense. "Your home planet?"

"I'm a Time Lord, dear." Her voice was gentle. Myka's storm of emotions was clear on her face, and sympathy was equally obvious in the Doctor's eyes. "Put your hand on my chest if you're having a hard time with that little detail. Two hearts and a rate far above humans."

Myka hesitated, and then released her. The Doctor stood up cautiously. "You've thrown me down twice today. Are you planning to make a habit of it?" Myka opened her mouth but shut it again without a word. Kindly, the Doctor reached out to take Myka's wrists. She drew Myka's hands to her chest and settled them there, her gaze piercing as she studied Myka's face, waiting for the reaction.

"That…." Myka's fingers curled into the thin fabric of the Doctor's shirt, barely at first and then gripping it as if this blouse was her only anchor to the world. She felt faint. "That isn't possible."

"It's perfectly possible for a Time Lord. I'd be more concerned if I didn't have two hearts." She squeezed Myka's hands before gently breaking the other woman's grip, taking a step backwards.

Myka shook her head, slow and disbelieving. Her frustration was gone and the shock had returned in full force. "A Time Lord? From Gallifrey? What does that _mean_?"

The Doctor leaned on the console, looking absentmindedly into the tube that rose from it. "Earlier you said you didn't believe in extraterrestrials. I'm the evidence you were lacking. I was born on Gallifrey, a…truly lovely planet. It's near 250 million light years away from Earth, so you're excused for not being familiar with it. I was born there well over a thousand years ago. You wouldn't understand much more about that." She turned back to look at Myka. Her smile was strangely tired. "I don't like to talk about myself."

"Hold up. You can't say you're an alien and not talk about it after that!" Myka ran her hands wildly through her hair, trying to understand. She had felt the two racing heartbeats with her own hands. Reality was unsettlingly close to crumbling around her.

"That is exactly what I intend on doing." The Doctor moved around the console to a touchscreen, her hands moving too swiftly for Myka to make out what she was doing, even as she sidled closer to try and get a glimpse. "We have a task we should be working on, remember? Car accidents? It's dreadfully hard on both parties when I find myself with a skeptic but I promise things will make more sense as we go along. For now, you can just forget about the whole Time Lord thing and pretend I'm a strange woman with a nifty box if that makes things easier. Usually it helps if I meet up with people in the middle of some sort of terrible tragedy. Earth under assault or something like that. Then they already have evidence. You showed up a few hours too early. Of course, it does mean they're caught up in a terrible tragedy, so I suppose you're better off. But honestly, how much has to happen before humans start to figure out that aliens are very, very present? No one ever remembers anything! I digress. You'll have to be skeptical of me for a bit longer. Are you still skeptical? I wish I could take you for a ride and change your mind, but we must deal with things here first."

Her logic made sense. Any more answers right now would just confuse her more, she decided, trying to convince herself of that fact. No manual for an afternoon with an alien, after all. "You're a babbler," Myka told her, and she was amused to see that Time Lords blushed too. If this was reality, she had no choice but to accept it. If this was a hallucination, she might as well enjoy it. "Alright. So, uh, what is it about car crashes that brings a thousand year old alien to Cardiff?"

She stepped to the side of the screen, beckoning Myka to take a look. "Humans and your brief little moods. I'm glad we'll be working together, nevertheless. I'm sure you're familiar with this data, yes? There have never been this many accidents in Cardiff. They're all odd circumstances, like when I was nearly hit this afternoon. And the driver never—"

"—remembers what happened," Myka finished. She looked up from the screen. None of this data was new to her; she'd dug it all up days before. The nervous woman of earlier was now the serious agent, all business despite the circumstances. "What, is it some kind of half-assed alien assault?"

The Doctor reached out to slide through pages on the screen. "Maybe. It's certainly alien. My readings are off the chart. Look at this. Perhaps you'll think it's bunk, but you can see the levels of extraterrestrial activity in Cardiff over the past few years here, and this is the highest it's been in quite a while. Cardiff is a bit of a hotbed to begin with, since there's a rift here, but this is unusual."

A rift. Aflush, Myka ducked her head to look at the screen, letting her mess of curls fall to mask her face. Yelling at Captain Nielsen and walking out of Torchwood suddenly seemed so arrogant and childish. "Okay. I don't know how this works, but that bar is definitely really high there. So…how do you stop alien car crashes?"

The Doctor flashed her that lovely smile once more. "Why, the same way you stop any alien assault. Come, let's get to it."

They exited the TARDIS, the Doctor in a dash and Myka at a slower pace. Myka glanced at the time machine one more time before she shut the door. Pete would be impressed, she thought. Heading out blindly to save the city with a time-traveling alien was as far from playing by the book as she had ever been.

"So," the Doctor began, talking nearly as quickly as she was walking, "we need to find the common thread for a starting point. What would you say is the one thing these cases have in common?"

"Almost all of the accidents happened in the middle of the day. The driver always felt lost afterwards. A lot of the cars were Ford and there were a few more Peugeots than any others, but that's not too unusual with the demographics." She racked her brain, searching for anything else that could be a pattern.

"Think broader."

Before Myka could come up with another answer, the Doctor answered her own question. "They all had cars! So, let's find ourselves a car."

"They all had cars," Myka muttered to herself, incredulous. "Yes, why didn't I think of that, each car accident involved a car. Good grief." The Doctor heard and only grinned.

As they moved down the street, they took turns making calls to the driver from each accident. Most were evasive, claiming prior commitments. The sixth man agreed that they could come inspect his vehicle. He was a stout, balding man whose hands shook wildly as the approached. The Doctor ignored him, going straight to circle his car curiously. As Myka walked over to the man, he pulled out a tissue to wipe his brow.

"Are you from th' police?" he asked in a thick, shaking voice. "I've already 'splained myself good as I can."

"Relax. We're here about your car, not you."

The Doctor popped up beside them. She flashed the man a card, and his eyes widened. He gave them both a nervous smile, dug keys out of his pocket to give to the Doctor, stammered something about waiting inside, and quickly went in the direction of his house as fast as his stumpy legs would carry him.

"What was that?" Myka demanded. "The 'I'm a Time Lord' ID card?"

The Doctor handed it to her. "Psychic paper. Tells people what they want to see, among other uses. Not _entirely_ sure what he saw, but it worked, didn't it?"

The piece of white paper was small, fitting neatly in a thin leather cardholder. It was blank. Myka turned it over in her hands. "Why is it blank?"

"Because I'm an expert, of course." Myka handed it back to her, and amusement filled the Doctor's face as she took it back. "You, on the other hand, it's going to blare out your subconscious thoughts. It says—hah!—you trust me, but you're too stubborn to act like it." She laughed. "I can live with that."

"What?" Myka grabbed the card back from her. Once more it was blank. "Did it really say that?"

"Of course it did. It's psychic paper. Let's see what you've got for me this time."

Groaning, Myka handed her the card for the second time. The Doctor snorted, her eyebrows rising. "What is it?" Myka asked.

The Doctor tucked it in her coat pocket. "Oh, nothing, nothing. Come, let's take a look at that car."

The car looked new, no more than two or three years old. The owner clearly took good care of it; it shone, spotless. The Doctor tossed Myka the keys, and she let herself into the driver's seat as the Doctor opened the hood. Nothing seemed unusual about the car.

"What are we looking for?" Myka asked.

The hood slammed. The Doctor climbed into the passenger seat. "Haven't the foggiest."

Myka sighed, but before she could make an exasperated comment, the Doctor pulled something new from her pocket. "What is that?"

"This old thing? A sonic screwdriver."

"You just love giving me terrible answers, don't you?" It looked nothing like a screwdriver. The object was slim, silver and copper in color, and when the Doctor pointed it at the screen in the car's dashboard, a green light at the tip began up glow and emit a strange buzzing. Myka itched to ask more questions about the device, but she already knew better than to expect an easy answer from the Doctor.

The screen flashed white and then blue. A string of numbers raced down the screen before a single line of characters popped up. The Doctor ran a hand absently through her hair as she stared at the screen. "That...that doesn't make any sense."

"What doesn't? What's going on?"

"I can't tell what that says." She held up a hand to silence Myka. "And yes, I know you can't either. You haven't spent enough time in the TARDIS. But it's a language of some kind and I can't read it. That shouldn't be the case."

"Maybe it's in code?"

She pondered that, rubbing her chin. "Perhaps. It doesn't help us, though. I don't know what we're to do now."

Myka leaned back in the seat, exhausted, faced with another brick wall in her investigation. In the same moment, the Doctor leaned forward. She pointed the screwdriver at the screen with one hand and smacked the top of the dash with her free hand. "We come in peace! Take us to your leader!" she shouted.

Myka started to smile at the seemingly-childish action. But then the car started rolling, backing out of the drive and pulling out into the street, and her smile flew away. "Oh my God!" she cried for what must have been the millionth time that day, startled.

The keys sat in the cupholder between the seats, Myka's foot was nowhere near the gas, and the gearshift still claimed the car was parked. The car moved entirely of its own accord. It was entirely illogical in every way, and yet it was still happening.

The Doctor clapped her hands in delight. "Oh, I love it when a ridiculous cliché works! Fasten your seatbelt, Agent Bering!"


	4. 4: Hello, Computer

The car sped down the road, peaking at sixty miles per hour and showing no signs of slowing. At first, Myka was in shock, with an involuntary white-knuckled grip on the unresponsive steering wheel and completely unable to manage anything other than an inaudible stammer. Finally, the Doctor pried Myka's hands from the wheel and gently pressed them into her lap.

"Relax, Agent Bering. I promise that there are much stranger things in the universe than automated cars, and you're going to just have to go along with it for now."

Myka looked down at her lap and the Doctor's hands curled around hers, the only tangible thing that left her convinced that this wasn't a dream. "But…but there's no possible way it can be moving."

"There's no possible way for a lot of things to happen that have happened. Why, you wouldn't _believe_ what happened to me once, many years ago." She squeezed Myka's hands before leaning back and launching into her story.

For a while, the Doctor entertained them both with a tale of "the last time I chased down cars that drove themselves," though she seemed thoroughly astonished that Myka hadn't heard of what she described as "the ATMOS crisis." It was precisely strange enough to make Myka forget that she was in a car speeding down the road of its own accord, and by the end, the Doctor's enthusiastic rendition of the story had Myka holding her breath.

Unfortunately, the story couldn't last forever, and soon the Doctor was restless. After ten minutes, the Doctor began fiddling with the radio, stopping it on a jazz station. After another ten minutes, she dug through the glovebox and started skimming the manual. By the thirty minute mark, she was tearing pages out of the manual and folding them into perfect paper swans. Myka's nerves were slowly being whittled down by the exaggerated listless sighs from the passenger seat.

"You're a thousand years old, right? Shouldn't you have a little more patience?"

"Closer to one thousand and four hundred, but yes. And no. I travel by time machine—does that sound very patient to you?" Her nose crinkled and her fingers tapped out a swift rhythm on her knee.

Myka plucked the manual from her hands and put it back in the glovebox. "Don't ruin his things, at least. If you're one thousand four hundred years old, why do you look like you can't be over thirty?"

Seizing on any form of distraction from her boredom, despite an earlier claim that she detested discussing herself, the Doctor shifted in the seat to face Myka. "Well, for one, I always use sunscreen."

"Hilarious," Myka told her without a touch of humor, and the Doctor grinned and continued.

"I'm not immortal, per se…but I'm definitely not human, so I'm not going to function in quite the same way. This is my thirteenth face. Whenever I 'die,' to put it that way, I'm able to regenerate, only I'm a new person when I do. Then in each body, I age extremely slowly. My first form did grow frail, and I've been zapped a few times—it's never fun to suddenly age a century—but for the most part, my body can go untroubled by age for quite some time."

Myka looked at the speedometer. They were edging up to seventy. She tried to ignore it and returned her gaze to the Doctor. "A new person? So, your appearance changes?"

"Indeed. Many of my previous forms were men. Old, young, tall, short, all types. Last time, I was a middle-aged fellow with a magnificent mustache and these splendid gigantic eyebrows. Much more serious than me, and a bit preachy." With a smile, the Doctor reached up to touch her rich, dark locks. "No mustache now, but at least I'm not balding anymore. Besides, I don't think I'd look so good with one now, do you?"

A frown twisted Myka's lips as she tried to understand. "More serious? Does your personality change too?"

"Mhm. I become an entirely new person. Not that I'm ever radically different, but it's still a considerable change."

"Do you have unlimited regenerations?"

The Doctor hesitated, and it was the first time Myka had seen the playful glint vanish from her eyes. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth for an instant before she finally opened her mouth.

That was when they crashed.

The car went flying off of the road. Myka got a last glimpse of the speedometer before the airbags came flying out: Well over ninety miles per hour. Though the crash was over in a second, it felt infinitely long. The shriek of metal against metal rang out, and though Myka couldn't hear herself, she felt her mouth fall open in a cry of its own. A cloud of dust or smoke or both came billowing through where the windshield had once been.

When they finally came to a grinding halt, Myka discovered she was holding her breath. It poured out in a shaky, weak sigh. She reached beside her, searching for the Doctor's hand, in need of any reassurance, and discovered the other woman on the same search. They gripped each other tightly as the situation settled.

"Bollocks," the Doctor finally sighed. "One of us is going to have to tell that poor little man about his car."

Myka turned her stiff neck to meet the Doctor's eyes. They both stared at each other in silence for a long moment before a smile broke across Myka's face, immediately mirrored by the Doctor. "Not me. You're the one who made it take off." The situation was too absurd to do anything but grin, and Myka decided that she was going to have to revisit Camus with a new understanding if she ever got back home to her books.

"But I'm the Doctor and you're only the brand-new assistant! I say you tell him."

They laughed weakly and Myka untangled her hand from the Doctor's. "Are you alright?"

"Always. Are you?"

"Nothing hurts. I think I can get out of here okay."

"Let's see where our roadtrip has ended, then."

Soon they stood outside of the car, surveying the damage. The front was nearly obliterated; Myka couldn't believe that they'd gotten out unscathed. A thin puff of smoke rose up from the engine, but it wasn't enough to worry her. She'd seen cars on the verge of going up in flames before, and no immediate danger came from this wreck. They had torn halfway through the wide doors of a building—some sort of isolated warehouse outside of the city limits. Myka wondered if they would end up in jail for damaging private property. It would be quite the fitting end to her day.

"He'll need a new paint job," the Doctor finally observed, straight-faced.

Myka groaned, but she couldn't help but smile. "You think you're so funny, don't you?"

"Absolutely hilarious. Come on, let's look inside."

The moment she started to object, declaring that this was trespassing, the Doctor dashed ahead, jumping over the mangled metal. Myka had no choice but to follow her. "This is illegal! We're breaking the law!"

"Did you forget that we were just brought here by an autonomous car? Honestly, Agent Bering. Breaking in someone new can be _so_ dreadful. We aren't going to just walk away from something like that." Hands on her hips, she surveyed the vast, empty space. "It appears to be abandoned, at any rate."

It was a fair point. If there was a force powerful enough to move a vehicle, Myka supposed it must be powerful enough to plan the direction. "Fine. But I'm saying you kidnapped me if the police show up."

"Wouldn't be my first kidnapping," the Doctor teased. Something across the room caught her eye and she took off towards it.

"Wouldn't be…." Myka repeated, momentarily dazed. With a loud, resigned sigh, she shook it off and set off after her.

The concrete floor of the warehouse was completely barren except for a few scattered beams and boxes. The metal walls were equally bare. The only break in the monotony was a wooden door opposite of the wall they'd burst through. When Myka caught up with her, the Doctor was staring mournfully at the door.

"It's wooden," she said. "The sonic screwdriver doesn't work on wood."

"Your _screwdriver_ doesn't work on _wood_?"  
"Perhaps you noticed, but it's not a traditional screwdriver," she snapped, but she frowned, an apologetic tone creeping into her voice. "No, it doesn't work on wood. Its uses are limited. You see, it's sonic, so it works through—oh!"

In one powerful kick, Myka drove her heel into the door to the side of the doorknob and the wood splintered. With another kick, it swung free.

"My," the Doctor said, admiration evident, "you'll have to show me how to do that sometime. The benefit of traveling with a government agent."

Myka pushed the door the rest of the way open, and she stepped through, followed closely by the Doctor. The room was nearly as empty as the rest of the warehouse. In the center, however, sat a simple wooden desk. An old computer monitor sat in the middle of the desk. It beeped softly when they entered.

"Stay back," the Doctor cautioned, stepping in front of Myka. "This is your first encounter with alien technology. Be prepared for danger."

It beeped again. Myka stared at it. "Doctor, it's a Dell computer. The only danger is it crashing on us."

Hands on her hips, the Doctor turned to face Myka. "Is this the time for quips, Agent Bering?"

Myka bit back a grin and held up her hands in apology. "Sorry, Ms. I-Always-Use-Sunscreen. Alright, if you're convinced it's alien, do you think it's transmitting some kind of signal?"

The Doctor nodded, taking a tiny step closer. This time the box beeped louder. "Seems likely."

"It's a shame I don't have my handgun with me. We could shoot it and be done."

Even as the computer beeped on, the Doctor spun around to look at Myka, appalled. "What, your _gun_?"

"I'm a Secret Service agent, which you were praising me for a few seconds ago."

"Yes, but that was when you were kicking down a door, not proposing that shooting things was an appropriate solution to a problem. I knew I should have just gone and found another retail worker." She threw her head back in frustration. "Who knows how hard it will be to break you of this habit."

"Yeah, because there's literally never any use for a gun." Myka snorted, derisive. Her life had been saved by having a weapon more times than she could count, and if they were facing alien forces, she had no intentions of diving in empty-handed. She didn't believe in excessive violence, but she also didn't believe in unnecessary risk. She'd seen what could happen when risks were taken.

"There isn't! There's always a better solution!"

"That is the most naïve—"

The beep that came from the machine this time was loud enough to make Myka clap her hands over ears. The Doctor grimaced in pain but took a step closer.

"Hello! Sorry! We'll quiet down!" she called. One hand went into her coat pocket and slowly withdrew the sonic screwdriver. The beeping slowly lowered to a soft buzz.

Myka pressed back against the wall and watched. The Doctor bent down over the desk, investigating the computer. She ran her fingers along the side, frowning in concentration.

"Do you speak, or do you just beep?" she asked. The computer remained silent.

Then, for the umpteenth time that day, Myka found herself once more completely stunned.

"I…speak." The voice was detached, robotic, but definitely real.

The Doctor rocked back on her heels. She shot a smile at Myka, and Myka smiled hesitantly back, wondering if the Doctor was already over their bickering. Maybe when you spent your time talking to robots that moved cars around, arguments over weaponry seemed trite. She tried to dispel her own irritation.

"Are you the one who carried our car here? And who's been crashing cars all over Cardiff?"

"I…am."

"I see. And what—sorry, who—are you exactly?"

"A…computer." The computer's voice sounded like every single robot voice Myka had ever heard in television or movies. It would have been comedic if it wasn't so strange.

It was accurate, if unhelpful. Only the monitor sat there, without any cords or a tower. It looked ancient, light grey and bulky, and the screen was black. The voice and beeping came from a speaker strip on the bottom of the monitor. Myka and the Doctor stared at it in mutual bewilderment.

Finally the Doctor spoke. "Alright. Hello, Computer. I'm the Doctor."

"I…know." A white line crackled across the screen as it spoke. Myka knew little about computers, but she knew nothing should be on the screen.

Myka's eyes widened at that; the Doctor was nonplussed. "What? You do? How—but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by that sort of thing any more. Nice to meet you, then. Any reason you keep crashing cars?"

"No."

That wasn't the answer the Doctor had expected. She turned to Myka, who shrugged. "You're just doing it for fun, then?"

"No."

"Why is it happening?"

"I…do not…know. Can you…make it stop?"

"I never," the Doctor whispered under her breath. When she looked at Myka again, a dazed look filled her face. Myka only shrugged, lost as to what input she could possibly provide, and so the Doctor turned back to the computer. "How are you speaking?" she asked.

"I do…not know." There was silence. Then: "It…hurts."

"Is someone controlling you?"  
"I am…alone."

She tugged the sonic screwdriver from her pocket again, tossing it up slightly and catching it. Myka counted to fifteen before the Doctor spoke again. "I could reprogram you, I suppose."

"Does it…hurt? Will I…stop thinking?"

"You'd still be thinking, I'd imagine, unless I fried you."

"No more…thinking. Please." It beeped twice.

The Doctor froze in hesitation again. Myka stepped forward, behind the kneeling woman, and put a hand on her shoulder. "It's just a computer," she whispered.

With a deep sigh, the Doctor leaned back, propped against Myka's leg. "But it thinks."

"It speaks. We don't know if it's really thinking." It was, after all, a computer monitor. They weren't usually known for sentience. It was strange, that was true, but it certainly didn't stir up any empathy in Myka.

"It feels _pain_," the Doctor whispered, voice cracking. "I cannot bear pain."

Myka knelt beside her. "So end its pain, right? Isn't that the easiest? It saves people and it fixes this whole issue." The computer beeped dully in front of them. It did not speak as the Doctor made her decision.

The resolution was only an instant. The screwdriver shone green and made its whirring noise, and the computer screen flashed white.

"Doc…tor," it croaked. Then the screen was black and the room was quiet. The two women stared at what was now merely an old computer monitor.

Rising, Myka reached to pull the Doctor to her feet. They crossed the empty warehouse without speaking, each lost in their own thoughts. Myka was still trying to fully understand what had happened, an infuriatingly difficult task. It was only when they stood beside the wreckage of the car that Myka spoke.

"Was that it? Did we fix everything? No more cars being pulled into accidents?"

The Doctor shrugged, eyes unfocused. "I suppose so. It was easy, though, wasn't it? I don't think I've ever had such an easy go of things."

She patted the crumpled hood of the car. "A little anticlimactic to go from a car crash to a very polite '90s PC."

"Only…." With a sigh, the Doctor started to walk to the road, followed closely by Myka. "Only it raises more questions than it solves, doesn't it?"

"It called you Doctor."

"It did indeed. It had no motive. It wanted to stop causing the accidents. And, most importantly, computers don't just start piloting cars by themselves. There must be something bigger, but I don't know what to do. I've done what I came for. I don't…." She trailed off again. "Agent Bering, you'll need to call us a towing company."

Myka obliged. It was a long wait for the tow truck, spent in silence. Myka's mind was in disarray, her entire reality shaken by the day's events. She had stormed out of one discussion about aliens only to find herself partnered with an alien on a quest to stop a talking computer. Perhaps the Doctor and Captain Nielsen knew each other. It suddenly occurred to her that Captain Nielsen had talked about stopping aliens. Presumably some danger was involved. She looked at the Doctor, who felt her gaze and looked up with a faint smile. Myka shivered involuntarily and pulled her tan coat tighter around her. She wondered if the Doctor was one of the dangers Captain Nielsen had said came through the rift. An ache entered her chest, though she did her best to push it away.

Beyond all the joking and smiling, beyond the warm touch of the Doctor's hand, beyond the easy way they fit together like old friends—maybe there was something else, something more ominous and unpleasant. Myka wondered if it was possible for things to _not _be darker than they seemed. She'd read many books featuring alien invasions, but Wells and Bradbury hadn't written anything where a woman befriended an alien and they ran around solving puzzles together. And yet—

The Doctor reached over to grab Myka's hand, tearing her from tangled thoughts. "Thank you for your help today, Agent Bering."

And Myka smiled despite herself.

When they arrived back in Cardiff, it was dark and a chill had fallen over the town. A faint drizzle began as they paid their driver and stepped out onto the street.

"I'll be going home now," Myka said. The words were flat, strained, and she fought to push them forth. "I guess we probably won't see each other again."


	5. 5: Five Thousand Lightyears

"Going home?" the Doctor asked. She rubbed the back of her neck, a small frown curving her lips. "Why?"

"Well, I—" Myka gestured vaguely, her search for an answer more for herself than for the Doctor. "I have things to do. A job. Family. Commitments. What else would I do?"

The Doctor scuffed a boot against the pavement. A petulant tinge entered her voice as she peered up at Myka from beneath long lashes. "I thought you might want to travel with me. I like travelling with someone. We made fair partners, don't you think?"

Myka pulled up the collar of her jacket. The soft rain grew colder every moment. "Travel where?"

"Space. Time." The Doctor shrugged, with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "The usual."

Every atom of Myka cried out for her to accept the offer. There was nothing for her in Cardiff, and there was little more for her in D.C. The Doctor affected her so profoundly; she had never been more fascinated and she had never felt so out of her depth. In Cardiff, she might return to Torchwood and beg forgiveness and win her position back. But a life in Cardiff sharing a cheap apartment with Pete was not what she wanted. Here stood the answer to every one of her childhood dreams for adventure. She had the potential to live a plot greater than any of the novels she had loved so dearly when she was young. How could she possibly refuse it? Who else got a chance like this?

"I can't," she said.

"Ah."

"I just…I can't. I can't just take off with an alien on a whim. That's not who I am. That story you told me, about ATMOS—I don't want to live in a world like that. Saving the world every day is too much for me."

"You won't consider it?"

Myka shook her head as tears of regret burned in her eyes. She was thankful for the cloak of night. "I did consider it."

"Ah. Well, perhaps I'll look you up the next time I'm in Cardiff. Never know when you'll need someone to kick down a door, right?" She shoved her hands into her pockets, again with a tired half-smile.

"Mm. Yeah." The Doctor looked young, Myka thought, but those black eyes carried the weight of a thousand years. The weight of thirteen lives. Myka closed her eyes tight, but the woman's face stayed imprinted on her eyelids.

Hastily, throat too tight for a farewell, she turned and strode down the street. No sound came from behind her: No cry, no racing footsteps. At the end of the street, she glanced over her shoulder. The Doctor was a silhouette in the glow of the streetlight, hands in her pockets, long coat billowing behind her in the rain and wind. Myka wanted to run to her and let herself be swept off in the TARDIS. Instead, she rounded the corner. She wiped her eyes and her hand came away wet; with rain or tears, she did not know. Her body felt strange, as if it was not hers. She was watching Myka Bering walk down the street and no matter how hard she tried to stop that foolish, retreating woman, she kept going.

When Myka was a child, time travel had been her deepest dream. A worn, dog-eared copy of _The Time Machine _lived under her pillow from the first grade through the eighth. Quotes from it had covered her notebooks. Later, in high school, she had read _The Sound and the Fury _and her heart had instantly belonged to Quentin, the broken, anachronistic boy longing to return to a better time. Like the Time Traveler and like Quentin, she'd spent many a night praying for the ability sweep away to another time or place. Nothing had appealed to her more.

And yet today she had met a genuine time traveler and she'd only traveled less than an hour from the city.

"Fuck!" The curse was hoarse and loud. Myka kicked a bench she passed, her hands clenched into tight fists. "Fuck!" She did not often curse; she believed in finding more precise expressions of emotion. In that moment, though, there was no superior substitute.

She pulled her sleeve back to look, panicked, at her watch. Twenty three minutes had passed since she had left the Doctor. It had felt like five. The rain was now pounding the pavement. The TARDIS had been perhaps five minutes from where they had stood. Myka wished she had some idea of how long a time machine took to start.

"You have got to be kidding me," she shouted at the sky. She rubbed her cold hands together. "I cannot believe I'm doing this," she muttered, "I really can't believe it."

Her protests into empty air were in vain. Before she could talk herself out of it, Myka turned around and took off down the street in a sprint with one last curse.

But even as Myka ran as fast as she could, the Doctor stood outside of the TARDIS, one hand pressed to its worn side and the other hand wrapped about the locket that hung from her neck. She was too drenched to feel the rain, though her wet hair tumbled across her face.

"It's just you and me, old girl," she whispered, forehead resting against the police box. As another minute swept by, she stepped inside the TARDIS.

She was so very tired.

When Myka finally arrived, breathing heavily, the TARDIS was gone. All of the hope rushed from her body, and suddenly the cold was a thousand times more potent. She couldn't find the energy to exit the alley. In defeat, she slumped against the wall. Something wonderful, something so strange and beautiful and wonderful, had just slipped through her fingers, and that realization bit into her like a knife. Only the mundane was left. Perhaps not every day would have been as simple as a chatty computer. There would have been nightmarish days, the kind the Doctor had told her about, the kind where more was at stake than a dented bumper. But it would have been worth it, wouldn't it?

Myka turned her gaze to the sky. The stars glinted faintly, masked by clouds and the light of the city. She wondered if the Doctor had seen them each, if she had seen each planet that spun around them.

She was so very tired.

It seemed like ages before she could push herself from the wall and walk towards the end of the alley. Her hands were so cold that they burned. She felt in her coat pockets for her wallet, sighing with relief when her fingers hit leather, and she wondered where the closest hotel was. There was no way she could bring herself to return to that stifling apartment tonight.

Maybe returning to D.C. was her best option. Maybe Torchwood would relinquish their hold on her, now that she had proved her inadequacies. She could lose herself in her work; it wouldn't be the first time. Over time, she might forget what had happened in Cardiff. Things could be normal.

Or maybe returning to Colorado would be best. It would be easy. She could work in her parents' bookstore. Complacency was simple and numbing, and at least there would be books.

"A Time Lord," Myka mumbled. She kicked a small stone down the street. "Today I hung out with a Time Lord." Surely there had been other people in over a thousand years who had met the Doctor and hadn't travelled with her—or him, or however regeneration worked—and Myka tried to imagine them as she walked. Why had they stayed? Did they regret it? Did it haunt them? What about the people who had travelled with the Doctor? What had become of them?

Her entire life, Myka had leaned to introversion. It was the time she spent in her own head that provided her the greatest comfort. As far as Myka was concerned, caring for others was a dangerous game and so it was better to seek relief with oneself. After all, it was those you loved who could hurt you the most, a lesson she had learned well. And yet, as much as she loved evenings alone, curled up with a book or simply exploring her own thoughts, she knew that she could never exist in complete solitude and maintain her humanity. Isolation was the cruelest of punishments.

"I like traveling with someone," she had said. The wistful twinge in the Doctor's voice still rang in Myka's ears. A thousand years was a long time. She wondered how many of those years the Doctor had spent alone. She thought about the way the Doctor had laughed and smiled as she'd shown Myka that small glimpse into her life, and she thought about her own smile and sense of absolute wonder. Perhaps it wasn't just herself who would suffer for her choice.

"I blew it," she sighed. She crammed her hands deeper into her pockets, and she bit her lip, gaze focused on the street.

Myka hadn't noticed how silent the streets were, a monotony of rain on pavement, until the noise came. It was a furious, groaning _vwoooorp vwoooorp _of a noise, and Myka had never heard anything like it in her life. The sound came from directly ahead of her. Almost unconsciously, she picked up her pace.

The noise grew louder as Myka advanced. After her day, she didn't think anything could shock her. But when a blue police box began to fade in from nothingness inches from her face, she still stumbled and fell backwards, hitting the wet pavement hard. She sat there with her mouth hanging open as it gradually solidified.

When the box was fully there, the flickering streetlight no longer visible through it, the door swung open. The Doctor stepped out.

"Hello, Agent Bering."

Myka stared at her, eyes wide and neck tight. "Is that—what—is that what the TARDIS does? It just appears?"

"Well, that's what it's supposed to do, but you never know with the TARDIS." The Doctor smiled and extended her hand to Myka. "It can't be comfortable down there, can it?"

"No, no," Myka agreed, still dazed. Finally, she tore her gaze from the TARDIS to smile hesitantly at the Doctor. She grabbed the Doctor's hand and let the other woman pull her securely to her feet. "I was looking for you."

"And I for you. How nice it is that we've found each other." The Doctor looked at Myka's hand, studying it as if it were the most interesting thing in all the galaxy, before finally releasing it. "Agent Bering—"

"Myka."

"Myka, then." The smile that crossed the Doctor's face was childishly shy. It delighted Myka to no end. "I've come to make a last desperate plea for you to join me. I think we made a good team."

"We did," Myka murmured. She felt dizzy. The entire situation was so surreal, and no matter how many times she thought she had accepted the sheer oddity of things, the waves of strangeness kept coming.

"I genuinely believe you would enjoy any time we shared," the Doctor continued, "and I think it might break my hearts to leave someone so splendid here doing whatever dreadful and boring thing it is that American government agents might do in Cardiff. You don't belong here. Even if it's only one trip, give me a chance to make my case." She waved an arm at the sky. Her eyes were suddenly bright with enthusiasm. Rain dripped from her chin, the stream continuing as soon as she wiped it away, and an effort to push her hair from her face was equally useless. "Pick anywhere that has ever existed—"

"Yes. Yes, I want to come. Whisk me off in your strange box and show me the stars, Doctor." The words tore from her in an explosion, a giddy shout. She wrapped her arms about herself, feeling as if she was about to burst.

The Doctor drew up in delight. "Truly?"

Myka paused, took a deep breath, and then smiled at her. "Anything to get out of the rain."

"Well, get in!"

The step from the wet pavement to the floor of the TARDIS was the scariest step Myka had ever taken. She was desperately glad that she had the Doctor beside her to help her take it.

The silent Doctor from their ride back from the warehouse was gone, and the jumbled, excited Doctor that Myka had first met was back. She dashed about, scrounging up a towel to throw at Myka, who caught it gratefully and tried to dry her sopping mane of curls. In the next moment, the Doctor was skidding to a stop in front of the console, throwing a wheel into motion and jabbing the button beside it.

"Myka! Where are we going? Pick quickly!"

Myka stood behind her, looking down at the console in confusion and glee at the madness of it all. "I want to see the stars without the streetlights."

The Doctor slid to the other side of the console, hands moving quicker than Myka could follow.

"You're in luck. There is absolutely nothing in the entire galaxy I would enjoy more than showing you the stars right now."

"Nothing more I'd enjoy than seeing them with you."

One last button was given a hearty push. The loud roar of the TARDIS began, and, momentarily thrown off balance, Myka grabbed the Doctor's arm. "Is it always so bumpy?"

"Oh, _you_ try doing a better job of piloting this old thing! You'll get your TARDIS legs eventually. Just like a boat…only we're flying through time and the entire universe instead of a measly little ocean."

The ride was short, and when the shaking and the jumble of noises stopped, they were left in a gently swaying TARDIS. Myka released the Doctor, steadying herself.

"The Swan Nebula Complex, in the constellation Sagittarius. It's about five thousand light years from Earth, and one of the brightest regions of your entire galaxy. Take a look. Not bad."

"What, just…stick my head out the door? In space?"

"You're fine if you don't hop out of the TARDIS. Actually, you can do a hop if you want to; only let me get a hold on you first." The Doctor grinned. "Don't tell me you're still skeptical."

And so Myka Bering opened the door of a time machine and gazed out into the endless wonder of the stars, an alien standing at her elbow. Her breath stuck in her throat and her eyes filled with tears. She never wanted to exist outside of that single moment. Knees weak, she sunk to the ground.

Well over an hour passed with Myka sitting on the edge of the TARDIS and the Doctor wedged in beside her. She could only stare out at the expanse before her, motionless except for her legs, swinging over the edge. Several times she began to speak but she never managed a syllable.

When Myka finally rediscovered the power of speech, her voice quavered. "I have never seen anything more awe-inspiring in my entire life." It was the truest statement she could remember ever making.

The Doctor swept her arm across the expanse of space in front of them, fingers outstretched as if she was straining to catch a distant star in her hands. Her voice, too, was soft with wonder and respect for the universe that extended before them. "Oh, darling, this is only a glimpse. This is only the very beginning."


	6. 6: Missed It By That Much

The vastness of space shone out before them, the deepest black and the brightest light that Myka had ever seen. Color and light danced wildly, magnificent and unbelievable. She could have spent her whole life there. There was no logical reason, a shrill voice in the back of her mind reminded her, that she should be able to look out there and see so clearly and draw breath. But it was hard to care about logic in a moment like that.

The Doctor shifted beside her. "Still a cynic?"

Myka shook her head silently, still staring out at the stars. There was no cynicism left for her. She remembered the psychic paper and she twisted to look at the Doctor. "Hey," she said.

The Doctor had risen, and she paused several steps away at Myka's voice, turning to her. She waited, frozen mid-pace, anticipative.

"I trust you."

A minute smile crept onto the Doctor's face. "It's nice to hear it from the source. Come, we can't sit here all day. Well, we could, but I haven't got the patience for it. There are adventures to be had!"

Several more seconds blew past, Myka trying to soak in the entirety of the universe in a single look. She remembered the Doctor's promise that this was only the beginning, and a powerful lightness filled her chest. There would be a thousand more chances. Then, reluctantly, she stood and shut the door, returning to the Doctor's side.

"Are you hungry?" asked the Doctor.

Hunger had been the last thing on Myka's mind, but she suddenly realized she was ravenous. The piece of toast that morning seemed a century ago. "I'm starving. Why, do you have a kitchen back here somewhere? When do I get to see the rest of the TARDIS?"

"Soon! But tonight, we have dinner plans! Pick someone, anyone, we'll go dine with them. Chicken with Napoleon? Potatoes with Ben Franklin? Cake with Marie Antoinette?"

Myka laughed. "Anyone? Really?" She immediately began pouring through a list of names in her head, world history in brief. There were too many perfect options.

"Absolutely! Well—nearly anyone. A few people are off limits if we want to keep our heads." When Myka tilted her head curiously, the Doctor grinned, lifting a finger to her lips in a show of secrecy. "Can't tell the exact circumstances."

"You owe me those stories someday. But tonight I want to meet Shakespeare." The name leapt to her lips, almost unbidden. There was no one else it could have been.

The Doctor groaned in exaggerated dismay, clapping a hand to her stomach. "Not Elizabethan food! I hate turnips and they haven't any good chocolate yet."

Myka crossed her arms, giving the Doctor her best glare. She watched the other woman wilt. "You said anyone."

The Doctor began pressing buttons and twisting knobs. She sighed loudly and melodramatically. "I don't see why everyone always wants to meet Shakespeare. Nice fellow. Not all that exciting. He'll just try to woo us all night long and quote a friend of mine."

The roar of the TARDIS began—and then stopped, devolving into a choking sputter of a sound. The Doctor smacked the console with a shout, and slowly the noise returned to normal.

"Hitting it always works," she said, pleased.

A grinning Myka started to comment on how the Doctor had smacked the car to start it and they'd seen how _that_ ended, but before the thought was fully formed, the noise shot up in pitch, and she was thrown to the floor by a wave of turbulence.

"Is this supposed to happen?" she shouted. The TARDIS was shaking too wildly for her to stand. She had never been carsick, but time machines were altogether different. Nausea coursed through her as she slid across the floor.

"Does it _seem_ like it's supposed to be happening?" the Doctor shouted back, barely maintaining a position on her hands and knees as the police box rocked.

There was a loud crack and a flash of blackness, and then the TARDIS was still.

Flat on her back, Myka grimaced, rubbing her temple. A dull pain throbbed in her head. "You sure can make an entrance. You've probably set half of London off in a panic."

"I'm known for my entrances," breathed the Doctor, pushing herself to her feet. She wavered and steadied herself on the console. "Among other things. Well, let's go see dear old Will."

She pulled the door open, giving a sweeping flourish as she did so. "Welcome to Shakespeare's London, darling."

Myka paused in the doorway. "Uh, I think you missed it by a little."

"What?" The Doctor turned and looked out the door. She exchanged a startled look with Myka. "Ah. Yes. We're a bit off, aren't we?"

It was midday outside. The sky was blue and cloudless, as lovely as any day could be. A warm, gentle wind tousled their hair as they stared out of the TARDIS. No buildings were in sight; instead, there stretched a vast, empty field, tall grass extending as far as the eye could see. Over the crest of a hill, a thin plume of smoke rose. There were no other signs of life. It was definitely not London.

"Where are we?" Myka asked.

"And equally importantly, _when_ are we?" mused the Doctor. Nothing nearby gave any indication.

"How did you pilot the TARDIS to within two feet of me in Cardiff but you couldn't even get us anywhere close to Elizabethan London?"

The Doctor snorted, amused. "Considering many of my flights, you should be grateful we only ended up in a field."

Myka caught the Doctor's arm, tugging her back to the TARDIS. "Come on, we have a dinner date with Shakespeare." Fields were less interesting than literary idols, and she had no intention of passing up the latter for the former.

The Doctor broke away and danced several steps ahead of her. "Don't you want to explore? The TARDIS has never taken me anywhere I didn't need to be! There's sure to be something interesting!" she cried, still moving.

"But—"

Now the Doctor was yards away, and she cupped her hands around her mouth to shout. "Don't be the uptight agent caricature, Bering! Come on! Be impulsive!"

And so Myka shut the door of the TARDIS and traipsed after the Doctor. As they walked, the Doctor chattered, trying to explain to Myka all the mechanical reasons that this older model of the TARDIS was occasionally unreliable. It was too technical (and too alien) for Myka to understand, but the melodious voice of the Doctor was more enjoyable than silence, so she let her rant on in an impassioned comparison of different ways to put circuits together and why the TARDIS was incorrectly wired and simply listened, occasionally murmuring an "Mm" or "I see."

"Anyway," the Doctor finished, "she's sentient, so I suppose that's the main factor."

"Don't you ever say anything normal?" Myka demanded. Of course, she knew the answer already. The Doctor laughed. They stepped up from the grass onto a pressed dirt road and proceeded in the direction of the smoke wisp.

After only a few more minutes of walking, a creaking wooden cart came rolling up behind then, pulled by a mournful mare and helmed by a thickset older man. He glared out at them from under a floppy-brimmed hat.

"You can't be out on the road! Who are you?"

The Doctor waved cheerfully at him. "Hello, sir! What year is this?"

His lip curled into a sneer. He brought the cart to a stop. "What year? Are you stupid?"

"Debatable! What year is it?"

"It's March of 1775, of course." He leaned down, inspecting them. "Who are you two?"

The Doctor bowed, and Myka saw the man bristle. "Thank you. 1775, I really should have known. I'm the Doctor, and this is—"

"Myka Bering, Secret Service," she said, terse. She inherently didn't trust him, not with that derision on his face.

His glare deepened. "Do you have husbands? Where are they?" In that moment, Myka went from not liking him to detesting him.

"No, no husbands, we're just out for a stroll by ourselves." Hands in the pockets of her coat, the Doctor rocked back and forth on her heels. She flashed him another smile.

A vein pulsed in the man's forehead. "You'll get us all killed being out like this. Get in the back. I'm taking you back to Boston. And don't try anything funny!"

The Doctor elbowed Myka's side. "Boston's fun, I have stories about Boston," she whispered, raising her eyebrows in comic emphasis, and Myka snickered. The man twisted in his seat to glower at them. The Doctor hopped into the cart, followed by Myka, and they found uncomfortable seats among the lumpy sacks that filled the cart. Myka watched as the Doctor buttoned her thin blouse up one more button, too far for Myka to be able to keep casting glances at the freckles visible on her chest. When the Doctor looked up from her task, she met Myka's eyes and grinned.

"Well, I don't want to scandalize the poor chap any further," the Doctor whispered. "He already thinks we're a bit touched in the head. And no husbands!"

"Be quiet!" the man yelled, and Myka and the Doctor obeyed.

But only until the cart rose over the top of the hill and the source of the smoke was visible.

"Here's Boston," the man told them, and the Doctor let loose with an extended, mocking, "No-_o_-_o_."

"That isn't Boston," she said when he turned around with yet another glare. "I've been to Boston. That isn't it."

They looked out at a miniscule little hamlet, with less than twenty buildings visible. The ocean was nowhere in sight.

He snapped the reins and the horse picked up its pace. "The only Boston, Massachusetts there is, and anyone who says otherwise had better change their mind."

A pit had formed in Myka's stomach, instinctive fear filling her as soon as she'd seen this strange Boston. The Doctor ran a hand through her hair, looking as worried as Myka had seen her. Myka reached out to touch her leg, and the Doctor distractedly placed her hand on top of Myka's. In this false reality, the gentle curl of the Doctor's fingers over hers was a powerful anchor. Anchored to reality by an alien, Myka thought. Did it get more outlandish? Once more, she found herself remembering the soft crack of a voice and eyes darker than usual, and she wondered how long the Doctor had spent alone. It was a strange, fleeting thought. She pushed it from her mind and focused on the smile, nervous though it was, that the Doctor was giving her.

"This is new," the Doctor said. "Ought to be more exciting than Shakespeare."

The cart came to a stop in front of a rickety building with a painted sign that declared _JAIL_. Any excitement faded.

"Oh, dear," the Doctor sighed.

"It isn't Shakespeare," Myka said.

They were roughly unloaded from the cart and escorted into the jail. The Doctor didn't resist, and despite a sense of foreboding, Myka followed her lead. The old man, face still contorted in a deep frown, began lecturing them as he pushed them into a cell and locked it. The general idea of his speech seemed to be that outsiders weren't allowed in Boston, but Myka couldn't figure out why. The man made little sense, too irritated to focus on anything other than his distaste for women roaming alone. "Interference" kept coming up, and he said "fiery fate" twice, which was two more times than Myka wanted to hear that phrase. But she tuned him out after the third time he grumbled that their husbands should keep a firmer hold on them.

"One of the masters will be back to take a look at you soon," he shouted, voice coarse. Then he slammed the door and was gone.

"What an ass," Myka said, looking to the Doctor.

The Doctor wasn't paying attention. Her eyes were focused on something across the room. Myka followed her gaze and stared, not understanding.

"Is that…a portrait of a robot?" Once more, new heights in strangeness were being reached. This definitely didn't belong in 1775.

"That's a Cyberman."

The name was meaningless. "What's a Cyberman?"

"They're—they're organic creatures that have become artificial. Removed their emotion. Can't reproduce so they—ah, conquer other peoples. Convert them. Terribly persistent." She was gesticulating wildly as she spoke, and she paced the room at a furious speed. "But they—they operate covertly. Shouldn't be a portrait. They shouldn't—they shouldn't be here at all!" She came to a halt, nearly bumping into Myka. "That silly little man wasn't converted, but he serves them. Why wasn't he converted?"

Myka shrugged hopelessly, leaning back against the wall, and the Doctor resumed pacing. She felt useless, and the Doctor's stammered explanation wasn't any help in her understanding. It was rare that Myka wasn't the smartest person in the room. When anyone needed an answer, she had it. Now, for the first time, she had nothing close to one. So she waited for the Doctor.

A quavering voice rose from the cell beside them. "Are you talking about the metal men?"

The Doctor skidded to a halt again and straightened up, turning to the direction of the sound. "Yes. Why?"

"I'm held here because I wouldn't swear to them. They came to Boston and they took us here and made us serve like slaves to them. I refused. It's been months."

The Doctor's brow was furrowed. She tugged at her lip in thought. "Why hasn't everyone be converted? Why haven't they turned everyone into Cybermen? That's unlike them," the Doctor muttered. "Who are you, sir?"

"Revere. Paul Revere."


	7. 7: Revere and Robots

Myka started coughing. The Doctor laughed, a shake to it, covering her face with her hands and leaning against the bars of their cell.

"Paul Revere?"

"Aye. That's my name."

"What a deliciously twisted day this is. Mr. Revere, I am currently composing a plan to destroy these metal men of yours. You have big things ahead of you and places to be."

"Alright," Paul said, sounding doubtful. "If you have a plan, madam, good luck. You'll need it."

Myka grabbed the Doctor's arm. "Paul Revere," she whispered. "_The_ Paul Revere?"

"He seemed to think so."

"He has less than a year left before his midnight ride! We have to fix this! Is your life always this insane?" Myka hissed. "Paul Revere and robots?"

The Doctor glanced away from the portrait of the Cyberman. "Actually, today is fairly normal. You have yet to see insane." She turned her frown back to the portrait.

The painting would have been laughable if the Doctor hadn't been staring at it so intently. The Cyberman stared distantly at a point past the artist, with only its head visible. It wore a tricorne hat propped on top of the bars on the side of its head. It looked like a child's imagining of a robot, bulky and foolish. The Doctor had given her a rushed explanation of the Cybermen, an old enemy and apparently a dangerous one. The description of their weaponry capabilities left Myka more than a little uncomfortable with the way the situation was shaping up.

"Mr. Revere," the Doctor called, breaking Myka from her musings, "can you explain things to me more clearly? Quickly, now."

So Paul unfolded the story of the metal men. Several months ago, though precisely when he did not know, people had started disappearing from Boston.

"Normal Boston?" the Doctor interrupted. "We were told this was Boston, but it can't be, can it?"

Normal Boston, Paul confirmed, though he shushed the Doctor rather irritably and told her to wait until he got to that part. The vanishings had been one by one at first, slowly, and then two or three at once. Each person who vanished was a well-established tradesman; carpenters in particular were prone to disappearing. He was a silversmith, as he reminded them with more than a hint of pride, far from a carpenter, and he had felt safe. But they had come for him. Two men had appeared in the night. One seized him and the other seized his tools. He was bound and dumped unceremoniously in the back of a wagon, and on the ride, they hit a bump and his head smashed against the side of the cart, knocking him out.

"Do hurry up," the Doctor pleaded, and he sniffed haughtily and continued.

When he had woken, he'd been in bed, and upon exiting the room, he had found himself in a shabby approximation of his shop. That was when he had met the metal men. Three of them had been waiting for him; he was fairly certain that they were the only three there were, to the Doctor's relief. They had told him they were building a great seat of power and they needed a human workforce. All the men they'd kidnapped had been put to work building the village from nothing, and it had been dubbed Boston by some worker who thought he was funny. Paul told them in very precise terms what he thought of _that_ fellow.

"They told us, 'Someday you may join us in power,'" Paul quoted, "'but now you are to serve us.'" Myka watched the Doctor crinkle her nose skeptically at that.

He had obeyed, for a while. He'd continued at his usual trade, crafting the tableware he always had at the request of the metal men. He had been well provided for. All the while, he had plotted his escape. The will to free himself and return to his wife and children had vanished, though, once he had seen another man try to flee. The metal men had shot him with "a strange, unholy fire from their arms" and Paul had abandoned his hope.

"I could not work for those monsters after that," Paul said, anger coloring his voice. "They are not one of God's creations. I refused to work and they tossed me in here."

When his story ended, all three were silent. Myka wasn't sure what to make of it. It wasn't any history of Paul Revere that she was familiar with. The Doctor looked completely flummoxed, a fact that worried Myka immensely.

"I haven't any idea what they're doing. I've met Cybermen many a time and they've never tried this before. To jail a man instead of shooting him? To even let men roam instead of converting them? Nevertheless, there's no time to philosophize. Soon we'll have you back home in Boston, Mr. Revere."

"Is there a plan?" Paul asked.

The Doctor cleared her throat. "Well, no, not yet."

Paul sighed mournfully. He did not speak again. The Doctor slumped down against the stone wall and Myka sat beside her.

"The gate is metal," Myka said. "Can't you zap it with the sonic screwdriver?"

"And then what?" She shook her head. "We're at a great disadvantage here. I need to think."

If there was one thing Myka felt confident she brought to this partnership, it was the ability to craft a plan. Her plans were airtight, precise and perfect. She just needed more information. "How have you defeated them before?"

Tugging absently on her lip, the Doctor considered the question. "Lately? Mostly through the use of technology. Haven't got any here in our little colonial commune. But—" She jerked up straight, her eyes suddenly wide. "Paul! Paul!"

"Yes?"

"Paul, I need you to think as hard as you can for me, alright? I need an _exact_ answer here." She pressed her palms flat against the wall that separated them. "Do these metal men have any markings on their chest? A C on their chests?"

Paul hesitated before he finally slowly spoke. "The letter? No, I'm positive there is no C."

The Doctor clapped her hands together, her face brightening. "Well, there's a weakness for you! I thought this might be the case from that picture, but these must be from Mondas! They're allergic to gold, can't handle it in their systems." Almost before the thought had left her lips, she was crestfallen again. "Ah, if only our friend Paul here were a goldsmith."

In an instant, Myka was on her feet. There were perks to growing up in a bookstore; she had just found one. "Silversmiths work with gold, Doctor! Brass, copper, silver, gold—silversmithing, it's… it's more of a technique than a specific material." The explanation, one she was only mostly confident in, came out in a rush. She pounded on the wall between the cells. "Mr. Revere! Did you have any gold in your workshop?"

"Of course," he snapped, offended at the suggestion. "What sort of a half-rate craftsman do you take me for, madam?"

Myka spun to point at the Doctor. "Get up, come on, let's go! We can get his supplies of gold and do whatever it is you used to do to kill them."

Beaming, the Doctor sprang to her feet. "Myka Bering, you brilliant woman with your outlandishly strange knowledge of silversmithing, I could kiss you right now," she shouted, clapping Myka appreciatively on the shoulder as she stepped past her towards the door. "Wonderful!"

Myka was thrown off for a beat, but she recovered in the time it took the Doctor to unlock the door. "Now let Paul out," she said, and soon he too was released from his cell with the aid of the sonic screwdriver.

He looked nothing like the heroic images of Paul Revere that Myka was familiar with. A matted beard hid the strong, square jawline she expected, and his face was sunken.

"Rescued by two women, truly?" he said, awe in his voice. "What a strange day this is."

The Doctor nudged Myka and rolled her eyes. "Time travel was so much easier when I was a man," she muttered. Paul missed her comment.

"Funny, isn't it?" Myka asked. "A whole group of men build the village for the evil villains, and then two women have to show up to start saving the day." He cowered under the pointed look she shot him.

"Mr. Revere, if you would be so kind as to point me in the direction of that gold you have…."

They crept out of the jail, and Paul pointed towards the building that had been his before his rebellion. The whole town had a ramshackle, thrown-together feel—understandably, Myka thought, since it sounded like the town had been thrown up quickly—but his building was one of the nicer ones.

"We'll be caught for sure," moaned Paul. "The three of us are extraordinarily conspicuous."

"If you don't complain so loudly, things will be much less dangerous," the Doctor said, and Paul obediently shut his mouth.

The walk from the jail to the shop was one of the most terrifying experiences of Myka's life. The Doctor's briefing on the danger of the Cybermen still rang in her ears. Though the streets were strangely empty and they were able to sidle along buildings and through shadows, her fears were unabated. Her heart beat like a jackhammer, and when the sonic screwdriver began to make its noise, unlocking the shop, it sounded like a jet taking off. Only once the door had shut behind them did Myka breathe again.

"I don't see any gold," said the Doctor, her fingers drumming on the table she stood before.

"I'm moving as fast as I can," insisted Paul, letting himself into a back room. When he came out, he was carrying two ingots of gold. "I hope twenty ounces is enough," he said, and Myka's jaw dropped.

"That is…worth an awful lot of money," she managed.

The Doctor chuckled at the look on Myka's face. "Yes, and we have such a good use for it! Can't put a price on life, right? Now, these Cybermen are quite a bit flimsier than the ones that have been hounding me lately. We're in luck if they really are from Mondas…." The Doctor suddenly paused, a distant look entering her eyes. "Although perhaps the Cybus ones are equally vulnerable to gold. You know, I never thought to try that. Hm. Oh, dear. That could have solved a lot of problems."

Myka raised a brow questioningly, but the Doctor waved it off. "I think I'm too embarrassed to dwell on that now. We have a present danger."

Setting the ingots down, Paul crossed his arms. "So what do we do? We have the gold."

"As I was saying, they're extremely weak when it comes to gold. Years ago, I had a dear friend named Ace—you would have loved her, Myka, very bright and confident and often terribly miffed with me—who defeated the Cybermen by shooting gold coins at them. But those were particularly, ah…flimsy Cybermen. Gold dust works best."

Paul looked stupefied. "But these are bars."

"Oh, Paul, Paul," sighed the Doctor, "you dear little man. Where do you suppose gold dust comes from? Or even gold shavings, really? That would be easiest here."

"What's the science behind it?" Myka asked. "Would I even understand?"

"Even _I_ don't understand fully. It doesn't make sense! Once I confronted them on a planet of gold and it didn't bother them until we blew dust into their faces. Better not to question such things."

The Doctor was interrupted by a sharp knock on the door, and she groaned, dismayed, as the metallic voice rang out: "Who is in there?"

"Get cracking, Paul." The Doctor pushed the ingots over to the silversmith. "Give us something to use."

In her years of training and time on the job as a Secret Service agent, Myka had prepared for nearly every scenario. Being confronted by angry robot aliens while in a colonial village without any available weapon was not one they had practiced, however. So when the door exploded in a burst of red light and woodchips, she reacted purely on instinct and a half-formed thought of, "Well, if coins worked…."

One moment she was standing there in fear as the Cybermen stepped into the room, and the next moment a gold ingot was in her hand and she was vaulting towards the robot. She smashed the bar into its chest mid-jump, falling to the ground and rolling past the other two Cybermen. An explosion came from behind her and she could only hope it was the Cyberman instead of the Doctor or Paul Revere being vaporized like the door. A blast hit the dirt by her head and she rolled away, leaping to her feet. She hurled the ingot at the second Cyberman, who burst in a shower of sparks and shrapnel.

Now unarmed, she froze as the third Cyberman directed the blaster on its arm at her. "Today, you die," it croaked.

"Pardon me, sir," came the Doctor's voice.

The Cyberman turned around to receive a face-full of gold shavings, and it exploded like the first two. Myka took a stumbling step backwards and fell in the dirt, and for a moment, her world flashed white.

"The strangest things happen to me when I have someone with me. I swear most days are normal when I'm by myself, but no one ever believes me when I say that." Myka opened her eyes to see the Doctor bent down beside her, and she let herself be pulled up to a sitting position.

Myka blinked at her groggily. "How many normal days have you had, then? Without a companion, I mean, before me?"

"In a row? Oh, a century, perhaps longer," said the Doctor, avoiding eye contact even as she spoke offhandedly. "Come, this isn't the time to delve into my life. You've gone and saved the day. And so quickly! Normally that sort of thing takes me hours or days, and I have to yell at them for a while first. You took them out before I could even get any information, which was quite dazzling, albeit problematic. You know, everything we've done has been so easy so far. Depressed computers and exploding Cybermen. Do you carry good luck with you? I'm certainly keeping you by my side."

Myka mumbled an apology for keeping them from information, though it was hard to feel too bad about destroying the Cybermen, adding, "You're babbling again. I've never met anyone worse at answering questions."

"Questions are only interesting before they get answers. Look, your fan club is gathering."

People were pouring from their homes and workplaces, gradually and then rapidly as the news spread, forming a circle around Myka and the Doctor. A rumble began in the crowd and soon it was a thunder of ecstatic shouts.

"You took down the metal men!"

"We can go home!"

The Doctor slung an arm around Myka's shoulders, pulling her closer in a triumphant rush. The Doctor threw her free hand into the air and the crowd cheered louder. She laughed. "How does it feel to save the world—or at least save Paul Revere?" the Doctor whispered, lips separated from Myka's ear only by a loose curl of hair.

Myka took a deep breath. "It feels pretty good."

"You had a good time?"

"I had a good time."

"We'll do it again sometime, then."

Laughing and leaning into the Doctor, Myka raised her hand in the air to match her, an act wildly out of character for her. The crowed whooped.

"Thank you!" the Doctor called. "Thanks! Now tear this place down and get back to Boston, all of you. We must be leaving. Excuse us." She and Myka pushed through the crowd, breaking out into freedom and heading off in the general direction of the TARDIS.

"Wait!"

They turned. Paul was running to catch up to them, arms pinwheeling madly. Myka covered her mouth as an involuntary giggle rose.

"I never even caught your names," he panted, reaching out to grab and shake their hands in turn.

"I'm the Doctor, and this is Myka Bering. We're partners in the business of…extermination, you might say. Rescue, too."

"Thank you for saving us and for letting me play a role. I'll never forget your help."

A forgotten worry returned to Myka as she remembered the date. "Get back to Boston soon, Paul. You need to talk to…Warren and Dawes, I think? Get in touch with them."

He rubbed his scraggly beard. "Alright. I'll contact them. They must still be going on with that little revolution of theirs—Sam Adams' revolution. It all seems so pointless now."

"No!" Myka cried out. If Revere didn't make his ride, then the revolutionaries fell. And the United States wouldn't exist in its current form, and if it didn't exist, then perhaps she didn't exist, and she wouldn't be there with the Doctor…the thought was unsettling; time travel was beyond her understanding. But she knew Paul Revere needed to make his ride, no matter how the intricacies worked. "Paul, what we did here, it's nothing compared to what you'll be able to do in their revolution. It's so important that you take part. The colonies deserve freedom and the weight is on your shoulders now. You know how to overthrow an oppressor. That's what we just did here with the Cybermen. So overthrow the king, too. The people need you."

"Good speech," the Doctor teased, grinning, and Myka shoved her.

"Of course, I'll do whatever I can to help! You're right, you're right; it's all part of the same noble cause of justice." He drew himself to attention, saluting them. "Continue on, ladies."

And so Myka, now the hero of a small Massachusetts commune, waved farewell to Paul Revere. It was delightfully strange, and she loved every second of it.

"It was no Shakespeare," Myka mused as they walked. The Doctor looked immediately disappointed at Myka's potential displeasure, until she finished her thought: "But it was a hell of a lot of fun."


	8. 8: Never That Easy

Already, climbing on the TARDIS felt like arriving home. The worn blue box was as inviting to Myka as anywhere she had ever lived, and the Doctor now felt like her oldest friend in the world—or the universe, she thought. She was surprised by how quickly the shock had faded. If she thought about it too long, it still seemed surreal for her to be flying off in a time machine, but in the moment, it felt as if she had done it all her life. On top of the sheer wonder of the situation itself, the Doctor had a way with Myka that left her more charmed than she'd like. When the Doctor was regaling her with tales of other adventures or explaining a piece of strange technology, Myka was too busy absorbing the information to care about the absurdity of it.

And so as they shut the door behind them and stepped into the heart of the TARDIS, Myka voiced the question she most longed to ask. "Okay, I've seen alien tech in modern Cardiff and we've traveled back in time. Forget Shakespeare. When do I get to see another planet?"

The Doctor rubbed her hands together gleefully. "I was hoping you would ask." Moving quickly, she began to work on the strange controls of the TARDIS. "Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon? Yes? Well, it will look like a child's sandbox next to where we're going. And I know you must be starving and exhausted, but have no fear, there's a spectacular resort close by. I'll show you how enjoyable a day exploring the wonders of the universe can be without danger nipping at your heels the whole time."

"That sounds perfect," Myka said. And it did.

Only with the Doctor, things were never that easy.

It was a promising start. Unlike their last trip, the TARDIS behaved nicely. The noise started up, it shook for a moment, and then they were off. The trip was quick, over faster than Myka expected for a ride to another planet.

"It's kind of fun when there's no falling on the floor," Myka teased.

"Oh, tell me about it," sighed the Doctor, a smile on her lips. "It's so nice when things go right." She stepped towards the door, holding up her hand to stop Myka when she moved to follow her. "Let me see if we're where we're supposed to be."

The Doctor pulled the door open a crack, peering out. Myka craned to try and see but the view was blocked. "Perfect," the Doctor determined. She swung the door open fully, bowing as she made way for Myka.

Myka stepped outside, temporarily blinded by the light. She shielded her eyes. A gasp burst from her and the Doctor placed a steadying hand on her shoulder.

"It's truly impressive, isn't it?" the Doctor asked. Myka managed a faint nod.

When the Doctor had compared their destination to the Grand Canyon, Myka hadn't believed her. She had seen the splendor of the Grand Canyon up close, and at the time, she had sworn to the man beside her that nothing could ever compare to the beauty that had been before them. This was so far beyond that. Myka couldn't find a single word to describe it. "Giganted" would have been a ridiculous understatement. All Myka could do was stare. The canyons plunged, descending into nothing but black below. On one side, cliffs soared up above them until fading into the clouds. The walls of the canyons were bright with a thousand colors, infinite variations of crimson and sienna dominant, with violet and turquoise and every other color imaginable laced through them. There was a radiant, shimmery quality to the rock and earth, and up above, two suns shone down on the planet, the light leaping and bouncing in the canyon. Thin, tall pines, a rich blue-green, were scattered about. A waterfall thundered down the opposite side. There was truly nothing comparable to it that Myka had ever seen on Earth, not even in photos.

Dry-mouthed, Myka tore herself from the spectacular view to look at the Doctor. The other woman was already gazing at her, a hopeful smile on her face.

"Are you adequately impressed?"

"Oh my God. Please tell me I don't ever have to stop traveling with you. Can we do this every day?" Myka laughed, a stunned, awed laugh, but it was only half a joke.

The Doctor's smile widened. "Alright. Ever." She paused, looking out to the scene before them. "This is still only the beginning, remember? If you like this...oh, Myka, there are so many things I have to show you."

"It's a good thing we literally have all the time in the world, Time Lord."

"Much more than that. Come, let me introduce you to some old acquaintances here. We'll have plenty of time to explore the canyons later, but I'm famished."

It was a short hike before their destination came into view. A long, low white building lay ahead of them. It was sleek, curved and shining faintly in the light. The Doctor explained to Myka that this planet was popular with tourists for obvious reasons, and this building was the core of their industry. Everyone who visited the planet stayed here, and apart from the beauty of the natural world, the food and lodging of the A'tahr Resort were renowned throughout the galaxy and beyond.

"We'll dine and perhaps rent a room. We can stay for as long as you want to stay."

"Not long, maybe only for the night," Myka said. "I'd love to, but...it's just one planet, Doctor."

"How I hoped you'd say that. Next we can go see the fireworks of Circina. There's a show a few hundred years ago that was supposed to be absolutely brilliant and I've never gotten around to seeing it."

The excitement of the Doctor was contagious, and Myka agreed readily. Encouraged, the Doctor began to run through a list of ideas for places they could visit. Myka listened to the strange names of planets and races the Doctor rattled off, staring out at the canyon as they walked. It was almost more beauty than she could bear.

In books and movies, travels through time and space always resulted in terrible danger. Myka had read many a novel full of alien attacks or asteroids hurtling towards the Earth. Yet here she was, exploring the stars, and the worst danger they had faced were robots that exploded at the slightest prod with a bit of gold. This was the ideal that countless characters had strived for, and Myka was living it. Her heart soared.

Soon they stepped onto the road. It was a simple path, a neat array of smooth white stones that led straight to the resort.

"I can't wait to shower," Myka said with a happy sigh. "Is there any kind of store? I need new clothes. Maybe we should stop back in Cardiff before we go anywhere else and pick up my clothes."

"I imagine there's a shop, but what do you need new clothes for?" The Doctor frowned. "I like those clothes. Just wear those."

"I can't wear the same ones every day," she objected.

The Doctor waved a hand at her own outfit: Blue shirt, black jeans, and boots. The long brown jacket was held over one arm, pulled off in the heat. "I do! I always have a, a…look. It's easy. Get a few duplicates of each item and you're set."

Myka grimaced at the suggestion. "That's alright for you, but not so much for me. Besides, these are my work clothes."

The Doctor sighed a loud, melodramatic sigh, muttering a complaint about "needy humans." Myka gave her a shove and returned with a jab about "grumpy old Time Lords." When they arrived at the door of the resort, they were both laughing and out of breath from a mad dash up the remainder of the path.

"Onward to food!" the Doctor declared. There was no visible door, but when the Doctor pressed her hand against a square pad, part of the smooth wall seemed to disintegrate, opening into a wide room. She and Myka crossed the threshold together.

The room was as minimalistic as the outside of the building, all white and round, with bare walls and no decoration. It was a far stretch from any vacation resort in the States that Myka had seen (not that she often had the time to visit such places). The ceiling was high and a balcony around the room divided the building into two floors, with doors lining the second floor that Myka supposed must be suites. Soft, discordant music played. A breeze flowed through the room.

It was a strange building, avant-garde and lovely. Yet stranger still were the people—the aliens—who roamed it. There were tall, lithe beings covered in iridescent scales who laughed a clicking laugh as they passed Myka and the Doctor. One being was completely covered in a swath of dark cloth. Only a hairless tail peeked out beneath the veil. Another was shaped like a human, but it had wrinkled gray skin and massive eyes like a fly. Another being looked like what Myka could only describe as a weathered carving of a woman, features smoothed and melted, with the illusion broken only by white fur on its back and down its arms. It smiled at Myka, toothy and distinctly unfriendly. Myka shivered, excited and nervous. She had fallen behind while she observed, and the moment she saw the Doctor several steps ahead of her, she darted to catch up. She decided she didn't like being this out of her depth very much at all.

"Hello," the Doctor told the creature at the desk. This alien too was bipedal. Her face looked like it was made from the bark of a tree; bright feathers served as her hair. The Doctor smiled and the alien pursed its thin mouth. "My friend and I would like to reserve a suite for the night. Or—" She turned to Myka, a brow raised. "Should we get two rooms? I promise I don't snore, and it seems easier to only get one."

"Oh," Myka agreed, "one should be fine."

"Brilliant!" The Doctor smiled, resting her hands on the counter. "One suite for my friend and I. The nicest one you've got."

The alien tapped briefly on a screen behind the counter, nodding to herself as she looked it over, and then she passed the Doctor a thin white card, one hand still darting about the screen all the while. "Here. An A Tier room, one bed, one bath, dinner tonight, and a joint spa appointment, which can be traded in for holo sessions. There's a brochure in the room detailing other benefits." The Doctor reached out to accept the card, and the woman finally looked up from her screen. "We'll need payment now, of course."

"Of course," the Doctor said, and she dug about in her pocket to withdraw the psychic paper.

Myka started. "Doctor, you can't pay with that, that's—"

The alien took the paper, skimmed it, and held it beneath what looked to be a scanner; Myka tried to catch a glimpse of what was on the paper, but it was blocked. The scanner beeped. "Perfect. Enjoy your stay."

The Doctor smiled, accepting the psychic paper and tucking it back in her pocket. "That's a tool of many uses, that's what it is."

That was certainly true. As they stepped into an elevator, Myka wondered what would have appeared on the paper to make it function for payment, but before she could puzzle out an answer, a new question arose. "What did the paper say when I handed it back to you in Cardiff?"

"That you trusted me, you mean?" The Doctor raised a brow innocuously.

"No, the second time. When you wouldn't tell me."

Now the Doctor was grinning. "I'm still not going to tell you. Look, here's our room! Splendid! Let's take a peek before we do anything else."

The room was luxurious. It was larger than Myka would have expected, as sleek and polished as the rest of the building, but with warmth to it, and it was filled with a thousand things she did not know the name for. She would have loved to stay and peer into the shelves and drawers, and, after being awake for what felt like a year, she would have loved to fall into the giant, soft cloud of a bed. But at that moment, she had only one priority.

"Come on, Doctor, there's a dining room back downstairs that's calling our names," Myka pressed. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed impatiently as she watched the Doctor explore the room. "You've been dragging me through space and time on an empty stomach and I would love to solve that problem. Then let's go look at the canyons again."

The Doctor set down an intricate object that looked like a very unusual tablet computer. "You are exceptionally bossy, Myka Bering."

"That means nothing coming from probably the bossiest woman in the galaxy."

With a chuckle, the Doctor crossed the room. She linked her arm with Myka's. "To dinner we go, then."

Soon they were seated at a small table in the downstairs restaurant, with the text of a menu projected directly on the table's surface. Myka could read the words perfectly, presumably through the effects of the TARDIS as the Doctor had mentioned, but none of the ingredients were things she recognized. When the waiter came, an alien with skin as white as the room around them, she could only shake her head in bewilderment.

"Don't worry, I'll order something for you that you won't hate—if you don't mind, that is. Any human etiquette there that I've forgotten?"

Myka's lips had barely parted when she was interrupted.

"Did you say human?" The alien spoke in a strange, hoarse voice, but the tone of anger was universal. "You cannot bring a human here." The beginnings of fear began stirring in Myka, and she rubbed her hands together nervously.

The Doctor looked at Myka, widening her eyes and shrugging. It was meant to be reassuring, Myka knew, but it only made her more uncomfortable. "But I already have a human here, and we've paid for our room, so you might as well let us stay, no?"

The alien hissed. "You have committed a severe crime. Security forces will be here soon."

"Oh, bollocks, not this," sighed the Doctor, brow creased in consternation. "Can't we just leave? Please don't make this such a scene. I don't see the issue, it's only dinner."

"Earth is in lock-down while the United Federation decides what must be done with it. Humans are banned from interplanetary travel. The human will be punished accordingly, as will you." He scanned the Doctor up and down, speaking with a derision that set Myka on edge. "Whoever _you_ are."

"What are you talking about?" demanded the Doctor. Her voice was rising. Myka could feel people around the room turning to look at them. "I have never heard of the United Federation. What do you mean, what's to be done with Earth?"

Two bulky aliens arrived in that moment, broad-shouldered and flat-headed, clad in black armor with green skin showing at the seams. One grabbed Myka before she could react and the Doctor had to hop to smack the tall alien in the side of the head. "We are perfectly capable of walking, you big lumbering idiot! Do not put your hands on her!"

The other alien grabbed the Doctor and hoisted her up despite loud, tetchy protests. Myka wasn't going to try to argue with a creature twice her size carrying two guns, but the Doctor wasn't silenced until the alien pushed a hand against her face.

Myka and the Doctor were carried to a door across the main room. On the other side, it opened into a simple gray room. One of the scaled aliens, this one a muted blue-green, sat at a table there, barely looking up when they were toted in. The alien carrying Myka set her on her feet; the Doctor was dropped roughly. The two armored aliens left and the door sealed behind them, leaving only a flat wall. It happened in a flurry, with Myka left struggling to grasp the situation. Had they really been thrown in prison for a second time that day?

The Doctor got to her feet slowly, a hand going to her back with a grimace. A rueful smile flickered across her face at the loss of their dinner plans. "Myka Bering, I just cannot take you anywhere, can I?"

"For someone who calls herself the Doctor, we do a lot more getting in trouble than we do helping people."

The alien, previously disengaged, suddenly jerked to attention. "Doctor? Are you _the_ Doctor? So they've caught you! And it's all over!"


	9. 9: There's Always Running

The words hung in the air. Myka's eyes were trained on the Doctor; the Doctor's stare was focused on the alien.

"What do you mean?" questioned the Doctor, voice sharp.

He pushed back his chair and stood, nose to nose with the Doctor. "You were the last hope against the Federation and you let them take you! What were you thinking, coming here? Are you stupid?"

"No," she said, that creeping soft anger entering her voice. "No, I have not been taken by any means. You need to explain to me who you are and what is going on, and you are going to do it quickly."

This was the side of the Doctor that made Myka shiver. She had only seen the smallest hints of it before, the very edge when she had talked about the Cybermen or when something had flickered in her eyes between laughs, yet it was so different from the smiling woman she adored that it seemed the most radical switch in the world. It was always there, hidden away in darker tones and the curves of frowns, but when that light in her face went out completely, it scared Myka—and apparently it scared the alien too. He began to pour out the answers the Doctor demanded.

"My name is Dag Uma, and I've been working against the Federation. Posters, rallies, that sort of thing. Laying groundwork. There's no big rebellion yet, but there's a few renegades, and we're making progress. I got in a nasty argument and started defending Earth in the bar and they overheard and tossed me in here."

The Doctor cut him off abruptly. "What is this Federation?"

"You haven't heard?" He groaned, his forked tongue flicking from his mouth. "You're useless! They're the biggest power in…anywhere! They're trying to connect the universe _peacefully_, so they say, under one authority."

"A unified universe," the Doctor muttered, no humor in her voice. She tucked her hands behind her back and began pacing the small room. "And what does this have to do with Earth? Is it in danger?"

The alien snickered. "So everyone's right, the last of the Time Lords really is a big sucker for Earth. It'll come in handy."

"The last of the Time Lords?" Myka broke in. Her mind raced as she tried to remember any mentions the Doctor had made of other Time Lords. She realized that there hadn't been a single reference to them.

"There's no time for this, Myka," the Doctor said, waving a hand dismissively, but the alien cackled again.

"You haven't told that pretty little toy of yours about murdering your people?"

Myka's neck strained in that look of angry disbelief that had rarely crossed her face since leaving Cardiff. "You misog—" Then the second part of his sentence hit her and she fell silent, turning to the Doctor.

The Doctor struggled with a response, mouth opening and closing vainly, only managing a comment after the alien laughed again. "She is not a toy and I would request that you do not speak about her so tritely," she snapped. "Your attitude is severely detrimental to everything we need to accomplish."

"Doctor," Myka said, but it trailed off, empty.

"I am regretful, but I am not ashamed of what I have done, and while this is not the appropriate venue to discuss matters, I believe Myka is entitled to know that and anything she wishes about me." Her voice was mechanical as she addressed a point on the far wall. The abrupt raising of the topic had thrown her far from her mark, and Myka didn't remember ever seeing her lost for words before.

Myka wavered, tempted by curiosity that had plagued her from the very beginning. She knew next to nothing about this woman she'd thrown away her home for. But she decided she'd had more than she could stand of this alien doing his best to cut at the Doctor. There would be time later for more discussion. It wasn't as if the Doctor knew much about her life either, Myka reasoned, so it was only logical Myka wouldn't know everything about her. It wasn't flawless logic but it was enough to set her back on track. "You know, the Doctor doesn't like hurting people, but I'm trained to kill whenever necessary, and if you derail this conversation one more time, I will not hesitate to smash your skull against the wall a few times."

He hissed irritably, looking between them. "The Federation plans to destroy Earth. They've said it's corrupted and can't be saved, so they've sentenced the population to death."

Myka looked up from him to find the Doctor's eyes locked on her, a burning gaze. Once more, that strange, indescribable look had filled her face. Myka licked her dry lips as she tried to comprehend what the alien had said.

"Nonsense," spoke the Doctor, slowly. "Earth is not perfect, but they haven't had a fair chance. They're mere children compared to the rest of the universe. What are they planning on doing? How long do we have?"

"They don't believe in outright violence," the alien explained, "so instead they've locked the planet down and filled it to the brim with these nasty tricky little items. They'll let the people kill themselves. They're very proud of their plan. Details about it are everywhere. Obviously you've been too busy visiting vacation resorts with your not-toy to pick up on big glaring details."

Myka had him flat on his back in an instant, boot firmly planted on his chest. "We need facts, not color commentary. Be useful unless you want me to move my foot and crush your windpipe."

"Myka, you shouldn't threaten people," the Doctor said. There was no force behind the words. A ghost of her smile flitted across her face, but she was paler that usual, and Myka noticed she was clenching the locket around her neck. She stepped over to stare down at the pinned alien. "Where's their base of operations?"

"On a big-ass starship," he croaked. "Don't know the name."

Myka blinked. "Did he just say big-ass? Is that a universal term?"

"It's the TARDIS," the Doctor said, amusement finally reentering her voice. "She translates him for us, and vice-versa, remember? Big-ass was apparently the closest approximation…or she's developing a sense of humor."

The alien started to struggle and Myka pushed down harder. The Doctor ran her hands through her hair, a frown creasing her forehead. "I need a better idea of what's going on back on Earth," the Doctor decided. "And I need to confront this Federation before things go too far. First stop Cardiff, next stop big-ass starship?"

"How are we going to get back to the TARDIS? We're locked in a closet," Myka reminded her. There wasn't even a lock the Doctor could use the sonic screwdriver on.

"Well…they'll come check on us eventually. When they do, I propose that we run very, very fast." Her smile was sheepish.

"We run? That's your plan? Why is that always your plan?" Myka threw her hands up in dismay. The Doctor's plans were almost worse than Pete's, and Pete's hadn't even ever existed. 'Running fast' was about as bad as a plan could get.

"Nonsense, it's not always my plan. Last time my plan was walking. Unless you have a better one, I don't see any other options."

Myka brainstormed desperately for a better plan. She let the alien clamber back to his feet, dropping into a seat against the wall while she thought. The Doctor paced the room, equally lost in thought. But when the door began to open, nearly an hour later, their best plan still was based on running. Fast running, as the Doctor kept reminding Myka every time she voiced her opposition again, but running nonetheless.

The two women stood on either side of the doorway. Myka had picked up the small metal stool that the alien had been sitting on, after jerking it away unceremoniously, and she shifted it nervously in her hands. One of the massive armored aliens became visible as the door began to open. Myka swallowed.  
"I hope you know what you're doing, Doctor."

"Oh, no, I never know what I'm doing."

The armored alien stepped through, and Myka immediately threw her entire weight into swinging the stool. She smashed it across the head; it stumbled for only a second, but she hit him with another blow and he dropped to one knee. The scaled alien, who had been sitting sullenly since Myka had let him off the floor, threw himself on top of the armored alien in a surprising show of bravery.

"Now!" he shrieked.

Myka took off through the doorway. The Doctor was already gone, sprinting madly towards the exit, but she started to turn when she realized Myka wasn't beside her.

"Don't stop!" Myka screamed, legs pumping as she tore through the room. The Doctor ignored her, catching up quickly and grabbing Myka's hand

"You stupid sentimental alien," Myka panted, gripping the Doctor's hand tightly all the same. Being left behind here was not in her plans.

"I'm not sentimental," the Doctor gasped back, "I just don't want to make you jealous of how fast I am."

Myka laughed, as much of a laugh as she could manage as they ran. "Sentimental."

"Is this really…the best time?" The Doctor's hold tightened on Myka's hand, though, somehow finding the awareness in the moment to give the back of Myka's knuckles an affectionate brush.

Then a laser was flying over their heads, and Myka shot a panicked glance over her shoulder. Two of the armored aliens were racing after them, guns held ready. The entire resort had erupted into madness, aliens shouting and cowering throughout. They were still only halfway to the exit.

This time, when the gun fired, Myka recognized the noise. She threw herself to the side, knocking the Doctor to the ground, who let out a shout and an "again?" when her hip smacked into the floor. A laser flew harmlessly overhead, obliterating a vase further on.

"Seal the exit!" one of the armored aliens roared, and the calm white light in the resort turned to a furious red one. An alarm began blaring.

Myka was on her feet swiftly, pulling the Doctor up, and they began hurtling forward once more. At the last moment, with the exit doorway closing quickly, they threw themselves forward, landing in a tangled pile of limbs on the stones outside.

"I hate your plans," Myka told her, breathless. "I am never letting you make another plan."

The Doctor only laughed breathlessly. "Well, it's _working_. Come on, we aren't there yet."

They took off again, flying down the pathway. Myka heard the door open behind them and she pushed the pace on, yanking the Doctor along with her. More lasers whizzed past them, almost ridiculous enough in the poor aim to make Myka laugh. It was worse than television in the inaccuracy. Her guard slipped, and then one hit her arm and she was screaming, sobbing dry and heavy, a fire ripping through her arm. In a feat that would have impressed Myka if it hadn't been for the pain, the Doctor responded almost instantaneously, pausing for only half a step to tug the taller woman into her arms. The TARDIS was straight ahead of them, and though the Doctor was staggering with her burden, it was only seconds before they burst inside. The Doctor set Myka down and slammed the door behind them.

"Myka," she panted, kneeling to peel back Myka's shirtsleeve and examine the wound, "Myka, darling, are you—does it—"

"I'm okay, just get us out of here. Don't let them get to the TARDIS." She could feel the tears on her cheeks with no memory of shedding them. The pain in her arm raged as deeply as the moment the laser had hit her.

The Doctor's cool fingers brushed the skin right below the burn. It was a bloodless wound, and not a deep one, and the Doctor rocked back on her heels, somewhat pacified. "Don't worry, they can't get in. You'll be alright, it might scar, but you'll be alright. Please tell me it doesn't hurt too dreadfully."

"It's okay. Let's go," Myka gasped. The guilt on the Doctor's face was evident, but it barely registered to her through the pain.

The Doctor bit her lip; it shone with welling blood when she released it. "I won't let it happen again."

"Shut up and get us far away from here. I know how to take a bullet. Or a laser."

This time the Doctor obeyed, leaping to her feet and darting to the console. In moments, the TARDIS had begun its distinctive howl, and they had taken off.

"I promised myself that I wouldn't let anyone get hurt on my watch again," the Doctor said, returning to Myka's side. "But I'm afraid we're rushing into deeper and deeper danger."

Myka gave her a weak smile. "We'll keep each other safe."

"No. Don't try to do anything foolish for me, Myka. I'm the one who can regenerate when she dies, remember?"

"Stupid sentimental alien," Myka said, a weary echo from before.

With a smile, the Doctor gave Myka another comforting touch on the arm. "I never used to be. I suppose I'm getting old."

Myka closed her eyes, too exhausted to manage for another second. "Sentiment's okay," she mumbled. "Just don't be silly about it."

"Aye-aye," the Doctor said, touching her fingers to her forehead in a salute. "Rest as long as you need to. As soon as you feel up to it, we'll head off to Cardiff. A world to save and all that."

There was a world to save. A world that relied on the two of them. Anticipation bubbled up through the pain, and a small smile curled Myka's lips as she lay there, taking slow deep breaths. The Doctor's fingers on her arm distracted her from the burning sensation, and finally, Myka was able to drift off in peaceful sleep.


	10. 10: Old Friends

When Myka woke up, the pain in her arm had faded to a dull throbbing ache, and she was able to bring herself to a sitting position. The Doctor was bent over at the console, studying something with a furrowed brow. One hand was tangled in her hair, pushing it up distractedly, and she worried her lower lip between her teeth. Myka laid in silence for a minute, watching the Doctor work—the woman was lost in her task, that unmatchable intensity that always lurked beneath the surface now clearly visible, and Myka couldn't keep the hint of a fond smile off her lips—and soaking things in.

Okay, she thought, it wasn't all a dream. She was still on the TARDIS, the Doctor was still there, and her arm still hurt like hell. It was real. That was good news.

She yawned, pushing up into a sitting position and crossing her legs. The Doctor had set her coat over Myka while she slept, and now Myka pulled it around her again and lifted a corner to her face; it smelled like old books and apple orchards. She coughed to catch the Doctor's attention. "Next stop's still Cardiff?" Myka asked.

With a smile upon seeing Myka awake, the Doctor pushed herself up from the console. "Indeed. Are you ready?"

Myka nodded. "I guess so. Do you have a plan for dealing with murderous alien objects other than running?"

The silence was telling. Myka groaned.

"I'm formulating a plan! I need to see the situation first." She stretched her arms out pleadingly. "Have a little faith."

"Last time you got me shot," Myka pointed out, getting to her feet and drifting towards the Doctor. Her arm twinged painfully at the acknowledgment. "I've got the beginnings of a plan and I think it's your turn to listen to me."

The Doctor took Myka's arm in her hands, investigating the wound. The sleeve was ragged, barely hanging on, but the wound looked significantly better. "Let's hear your plan," she agreed absently.

"How familiar are you with the Torchwood Institute?"

Clearly shocked, the Doctor's grip tightened on Myka's arm, and she yelped and tugged it away. The Doctor gaped at her. "How familiar are _you_ with Torchwood?"

"I was almost a part of it. They recruited me, only I wasn't interested, and I was getting out of there when we ran into each other."

"Unbelievable!" the Doctor cried, throwing her hands up. "I can't believe you didn't mention this!"

"I'm mentioning it now!"

"Did you meet Arthur Nielsen? Martha Jones?"

"I met Captain Nielsen, but no Martha Jones."

The Doctor sighed, eyes fogging with reminiscence. "Nielsen is a good man. A bit, ah…unconventional, but good. Ms. Jones is one of the greatest women I've ever known. She's only there on rare occasion, though. Oh, how hilarious that Torchwood had their eyes on you and you ended up with me. How perfect. Myka Bering, destiny has its hands on you. Alright, tell me this plan of yours."

"Our first stop is my apartment. I want a shirt without a laser blast through it. And then I want to go to Torchwood. My old partner, Pete, he's there too. He's…well, he's a good guy, and if you know the others, I'm sure they are too. I bet they're already working on the Earth situation, so they can brief us and vice versa, and then we head off to deal with this Federation one way or another." It was only the shakiest outline of a plan, but Myka still liked it better than running. Making sure Torchwood could handle things on Earth seemed wise enough to her.

The Doctor nodded, fiddling with the locket about her neck as she thought. "I'm sure they're becoming aware of everything as we speak, and if not, we'll make sure they are. Alright! Let's go."

When the TARDIS landed in Cardiff, the rain was pouring down in sheets, harsh and cold. The Doctor dug in her pockets, having reclaimed her coat (to Myka's disappointment) and withdrew an umbrella, opening it over the two of them as they stepped out of the TARDIS. Myka started to question how it fit in those small pockets, but she decided it would just be another half-explanation she didn't need to understand.

"Christ, I hate this Cardiff weather," Myka muttered, looking up at the dark sky..

"This isn't any Cardiff weather I've ever seen," the Doctor said. There was an ominous undercurrent to her words. "Can you see the clouds?"

The sky was an ugly grey, and the clouds were as black as ink. Myka racked her brain, struggling to figure out why things were off. When she'd first arrived in Cardiff from the United States, it had been sunny, if chilly, and that had lasted for days. When had this weather begun? "Doctor, this has been going on since before we left. It wasn't this drastic, but there was strange weather, and then there was…."

The thought clicked for them in the same moment. "The computer," they whispered simultaneously. A connection wasn't impossible.

"Do you really think—" Myka began.

"I don't know." The Doctor looked paler than usual in the rain, shivering noticeably. "Which one is your flat?"

"Here." Myka pointed and soon they were inside. She felt in her pocket for the key as they trotted up the stairs, letting them in to the apartment.

Myka left the Doctor waiting in the living room. Her first stop was in the bathroom. She shrugged off the torn blouse, looking at the wound on her arm. She'd had worse. There was a first aid kit in the cabinet and soon her wound was cleansed and bound. It still strung but the pain was quickly fading. After all, she reminded herself, there was no time for pain right now.

Her bedroom was exactly how she had left it, untouched. Myka wondered how long she and the Doctor had been away. Quickly, she dressed, opting for a pair of tight black jeans instead of black slacks this time, though her replacement blue button-up and her boots were much the same. She pulled her khaki coat back on. When she came back out, the Doctor was rifling through the fridge. An empty banana peel sat on the counter.

The Doctor smiled sheepishly. "Can't save the world on an empty stomach."

After they had scarfed down a poor substitute for a meal, starring pretzels and potato chips and other assorted junk that had taken over the fridge since Myka had left, it was back out into the rainy streets.

"I like those pants," the Doctor said, grinning. "They fit you well."

"They're _comfortable_," Myka told her, reddening, and the Doctor laughed.

The rain was coming down even harder than before, and Myka had no interest in walking through it any longer. "Torchwood is probably a good forty-five minutes from here, and that's if we get lucky with the buses," Myka said, remembering the Doctor's impatience with their early trip in the car.

The Doctor looked disgusted at that. "Forty-five? Absolutely not."

So it was back to the TARDIS. It seemed inefficient to take a time machine only a few miles, but with this weather, Myka wasn't going to complain. They landed in the middle of Roald Dahl Plass, and with the umbrella whipped out again, they darted towards the shuttered tourism office.

The door was locked. Myka pounded on it until the lock clicked open and the door cracked.

"Leena, right?" Myka asked. "It's Agent Myka Bering. We need to come in immediately."

A frown creased Leena's face; her eyes were full of kindness and confusion. "I'm so sorry, but you can't come in right now. I can schedule you a meeting later with Captain Nielsen if you want to reconsider your place with us."

The Doctor intervened, leaning in over Myka's shoulder to smile at Leena. "Excuse me, sorry, I'm the Doctor. _The_ the Doctor, you might say. We really do need to come in as soon as possible. Now, in fact."

Surprise passed over Leena. She pulled the door open fully and ushered them in out of the rain. "Doctor! I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you."

Smiling, the Doctor folded up her umbrella. "No, you wouldn't have. It's been a few faces. Thank you for letting us in—so good to see you. We'll be heading down, then."

"Of course!"

Like before, the wall opened up, and soon Myka and the Doctor were walking into the Hub, Leena close behind them. Claudia was sitting at her desk when they came in, hopping up as soon as they entered the main room. "Uh, Myka Bering, you aren't supposed to be here, are you? What's going on?"

"Hello, I don't think we've met. You must be new here. I'm the Doctor."

Claudia went white as a sheet. The mug in her hand crashed to the floor. "Artie!"

Captain Nielsen came quickly, the moment the commotion reached him. "What is all the noise about? Agent Bering, what are you doing here?" His thick brows were low in irritation.

"Arthur, old friend," the Doctor cried, jumping forward and grabbing his hand in an enthusiastic shake. "I haven't seen you in ages!"

"What? Who are you?" He yanked his hand back from her.

The Doctor frowned crossly, shaking her head. "I can't believe you don't know me. Handsome fellow, impressive hair, looked splendid in a suit—still do, actually. That doesn't ring a bell?"

"This is the Doctor," Claudia cut in. "Like, the Doctor-Doctor. In person. Here."

Captain Nielsen's face changed from anger to shock and joy. "Doctor! My God, it's been years! Where have you been? What is this, then, your eleventh life? Hah! You look so different!"

"Ah—my thirteenth, actually."

An odd look spasmed across Captain Nielsen's face, one Myka could not place. "Your thirteenth? How? It doesn't seem that long at all."

The Doctor shrugged. "It's been a tough go of things for a while, Artie. But here I am now."

"You're being careful, aren't you? Thirteen…no, that can't be right…. But oh, it's so good to see you." He trailed off. He removed his spectacles and polished them on his shirt. Myka could see a wet shine to his eyes.

She was about to ask why it mattered that the Doctor be careful on her thirteenth life, but her feeling of dread was forcibly knocked out of her when Pete Lattimer came flying down the stairs, grabbing her in a deadly bear hug. "Myka! What are you doing here? Welcome back!" He shouted his greeting, enthusiasm more than evident.

She struggled to keep her balance, giving him a pat on the back, all she could manage since he had one arm pinned to her side. "I'm not back for good, Pete. I'm just passing through with the Doctor."

"The Doctor?" Pete released her and turned to look at the other woman, bewilderment filling his face. "Uh, okay. Who are you?" There was an aggressive edge to his voice that made Myka flinch.

The Doctor was in the middle of a hushed conversation with Artie, but she broke it off to stare at Pete. Nose scrunched in distaste, she examined Pete. "The Doctor. Time Lord. You know, like Torchwood, only _better_."

"You're somewhat familiar with her. That's her hand," Artie said. He pointed at the container that had so horrified Pete and Myka when they'd first arrived in the Hub. Now the hand was glowing brightly. "She's a great ally to us, on the non-human, non-Earth end."

"Oh my God!" Myka cried. Pete's appalled expression matched her exclamation. They both spun to look at the floating hand.

The Doctor looked delighted. "Oh, you still have it. This one does a fine job, but I must admit to being a bit sentimental about the loss."

Myka recovered first, shaking off the horror and confusion. "She's the most unusal person you'll ever meet," she whispered to Pete, "but she's wonderful. You wouldn't believe what we've been up to together."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I guess I wouldn't. You've replaced me with a real weirdo. You aren't on drugs, are you?"

The Doctor snorted. Myka mouthed "cut it out" at her, but she only rolled her eyes. "Yes, clearly leaving the rude little man behind to fly through time and space with a witty, intelligent woman could only be a decision spurred by narcotics. Artie, if you would please gather your team in the conference room, Myka and I have important and urgent things to discuss with you all."

Artie sent Claudia running to fetch Steve, moving ahead with the Doctor. Pete and Myka followed several steps behind.

"What's Torchwood like?" Myka asked, searching for something to fill the silence.

Pete shrugged. "It's pretty fun. We have some really cool stuff here. They plopped me in the Weapons Specialist slot so I get to mess around with some neat guns. I'd tell you more about what we've been up to, but it seems like you've been having an even weirder time."

"You wouldn't believe it. Pete, I've flown through space. I met Paul Revere—'the British are coming,' for your reference. I visited an alien planet and saw so many different creatures. And soon I'm going to go confront a bunch of aliens on a spaceship, or something like that. It's been absolutely fantastic."

"Huh." He frowned, unusually surly. Myka had never seen Pete like this. "So, this Doctor…."

"She's amazing."

"I have a weird vibe about her," he said, pausing in the hall and forcing Myka to stop and listen. "I've never had a vibe like this before."

Pete's vibes had always irritated Myka to no end. They were all impulse and no order. But now Myka had discovered that perhaps the universe had more impulse than she'd realized, so she frowned and listened. "What? A bad vibe?"

"Naw. Just…a weird one. A really really weird one."

Myka hesitated, turning that over in her mind. She shook her head. "You'd like her if you got to know her. Captain Nielsen trusts her, doesn't he?"

He resumed the walk to the conference room. "Yeah, but he's pretty weird too. Just be careful. Think about staying here and working with us. It's kinda spooky work sometimes but it's not bad."

This display of seriousness from Pete was making Myka uncomfortable. His dislike for the Doctor worried her, but only slightly; she pushed it down, ignoring it for now. If there was anyone she trusted, it was the Doctor. "Let's just get in there."

He lifted his hands in submission. He didn't speak again as they entered the conference room.


	11. 11: Snag It

The Doctor stood at the head of the table, an air of authority about her. She beckoned for Myka to join her there. Leena, Claudia, Artie, and Steve all sat around the table. Pete took a spot beside Claudia.

"Hello, everyone," the Doctor said, smiling without warmth. She leaned forward, hands on the table, all business. "You're all familiar with me now, I believe. I'm the Doctor, you're Torchwood, and I hope we shall continue to get on splendidly. And of course you all know Myka, my partner."

Pete shifted and muttered to himself. When he caught Myka's eye, he stuck his tongue out. That was when she wrote his vibe off as childish jealousy. She glared at him and he glared back. Just like old times, she thought bitterly.

"Hm. I suppose I'll start bluntly. An alien council calling themselves the United Federation is planning to obliterate all life on Earth."

"Wow," Steve said, "could you make that a little blunter for us?" Claudia laughed, but it cut off the second the Doctor looked at her. She blushed.

"I talked to Arthur and he said that you've already been discovering an odd influx of extraterrestrial items in Cardiff, yes? And you've all noticed the strange weather patterns? I believe these are part of the assault. Arthur and I have compared intel and we are confident the attack is coming through normal human items. Myka and I found a computer causing car crashes. Arthur says you found a vending machine where the snacks drove people mad and a football that caused unusual blunt force injuries."

"So, wait," Pete said, "aliens are planning to destroy Earth through household items?" He looked smug and skeptical.

"Yes, exactly," the Doctor said. She flashed him a winning smile, laden with scorn.

"Actually, it isn't nearly the craziest end-of-the-world scheme we've dealt with here," Captain Nielsen said, and Claudia, Leena, and Steve all voiced their agreement in unison.

The Doctor inclined her head in a consensus with them. "Indeed, it's far from the most outlandish one I've seen. Be glad you're dealing with footballs and computers instead of much worse. The Federation doesn't believe in direct violence, apparently, so we're lucky to face this instead of having the Earth already blasted to pieces."

"Anyway," Myka spoke up, "we basically need you guys to handle things on Earth. Stop as many of these as you can, and give us all the information you can on how things are going. See if you can find a way to...shut it off, I guess. The Doctor and I are going to go to the Federation ship and try to stop things from that end. We just need data."

"But first," the Doctor added, "we're going to stay for a bit. Arthur and I want to do some research. The rest of you, including Myka, are going to head out and get an idea of the sheer scale of this attack. We'll regroup and that's when Myka and I will leave."

This part hadn't been agreed on; it hadn't even been mentioned. "I don't want to go out there! I want to stick with you," Myka objected. "We shouldn't be wasting time."

"It's not wasting time, it's gathering facts to form a plan—like you told me I should do."

Claudia couldn't help but grin as they bickered, and when she leaned in to whisper in Leena's ear, the other woman looked more subtly amused. Pete stared in vague discomfort, while Steve smiled like he was in on a joke that no one else had heard as he looked at Myka and the Doctor. Captain Nielsen, the only one long familiar with the Doctor, chuckled. He had seen it before.

"Let me stay with you!"

"Oh, just trust me, Myka!" The Doctor brooked no argument after that. "Arthur will explain the specifics of what you'll be doing." She left the conference room in a rush, and Myka glowered and took the seat Captain Nielsen vacated.

"Some of these items will be self-sustained, like the computer the Doctor mentioned. Others will be based on touch or consumption. Because of that, we have to take precautions. I don't want any of you putting your hands on anything that seems like it might be one of these alien artifacts." He dug around in the pocket of his jacket, lifting a purple rubber glove. "You'll each have a set of these and you will make sure to put them on before you touch anything."

"Cute, we can wash some dishes after," Claudia said.

He scowled at her. "Once you have your hands on the item, you'll put it in one of our containment bags. They should be with the boxes but I'm not positive. Make sure you take a few."

"I'm sorry," Myka interrupted, "but this seems like a waste of time. I'm not part of Torchwood and I think that the Doctor and I should focus on the big picture instead of the useless details."

Captain Nielsen glared over his glasses. "I don't think there's anything useless about knowing what exactly we face, is there?" Before she could mumble a response, he was on his way out of the room. "Find a few and then come straight back!" he shouted over his shoulder.

Pete grinned widely. "Time to partner up, Myka. Let's go chase down some weird alien artifacts."

"Where do we start with something like that?" It was a monumental task, and to Myka, it still felt like a meaningless one. It was also one for which they'd barely been any explanation.

He laughed, clearly pleased with the turn of events. "Let me show you some of the tricks I've been learning while you've been off with Doctor Cuckoo."

"Charming," Myka muttered, following him from the conference room.

"This is where we keep all our cool weapons," he explained, taking her to a room out and to the left of the conference room. "There's a ton of things here that are straight out of Star Trek."

Myka stared at the room. The walls were full of guns both familiar and strange, among other indiscernible weapons. "I don't suppose you have a P229? Or anything a little more…normal?" It would be nice to have the standard-issue Secret Service weapon back in her hands.

"A PPK?" Pete offered. "We can call you Myka Bond."

She accepted the handgun, a compact, stainless steel affair, nearly identical to one she had used many times before in D.C. Pete picked something more extravagant, a gun edged with copper with glass tubes extending from the ends. Claudia and Steve, who had joined them in the room, selected smaller, equally odd-looking variants of Pete's gun.

"It shoots lightning," Pete said, grinning when he saw Myka eyeing the weapon. "It's from somewhere I can't pronounce and I don't know how Torchwood got their hands on it, but it's super cool." He struck a pose, holding the weapon out and making laser noises.

"You have a really fun job," Myka admitted, surveying the room. The amount of weapons was staggering; of course, she wasn't sure if Pete was who she'd leave in charge of a room of guns, considering that he still hadn't stopped pretending to fire the gun at them, but nevertheless, she was pleased he'd found such enjoyable work. It certainly wasn't the kind of thing he'd gotten to do in D.C., and she was happy for them.

"That's the Scorpion," he said, pointing to a sleek curved handgun, "there's the Locust, that's a Pulse Rifle, there's a Javelin sniper, and that gorgeous hunk of metal is the M-11 Wraith."

"Named by yours truly," Claudia chimed in, and Pete nodded.

"We can't pronounce most of the names Artie gives them. As far as I can tell, the original names are all the Ooglybook and the Diddlywomp. Claud's names are way cooler."

Myka looked at the weapon Pete had pointed out as the Javelin, a dark and heavy-looking gun. "Pete, when on Earth do you have the opportunity to use an alien sniper rifle? That is the most useless thing I have ever seen."

He grinned. "Never, but guess what we have down the hall? A gun range. Do you want to go try one of these bad boys out? Pew! Pew!" He mimicked shooting his weapon again. She was sorely tempted by the offer as she examined the guns.

"Uh, guys? You know we have things we need to do, right?" Steve interrupted.

Embarrassed by her distraction, on par with Pete, Myka was out of the room in an instant with the others following close behind. Soon they were out on the rainy plaza.

None of them were prepared for the weather, with the Torchwood agents even less dressed for the weather than Myka in her coat, but it didn't seem to affect everyone: Pete hopped into a puddle and Claudia shouted, "Seven point five! Add a flourish to the landing, you hack!" before following him in a puddle-jump, kicking up a larger splash. Steve and Myka exchanged a long-suffering look, and Myka decided that she liked Steve quite a bit. She matched his pace as Pete and Claudia dashed on ahead.

"So how long have you been at Torchwood?" she asked.

"Oh, a long time. Not as long as the others." He kicked a rock down the street as they walked. "Leena and Artie have been here the longest, then Claud, then me. Then Pete."

Myka remembered a question that had been needling at her. "Where does that woman—Mrs. Frederic?—fit in at Torchwood? What about her?"

He grinned. "Yeah, Mrs. Frederic. That's a great question and I wish I had an answer. She pops up sometimes, acts mysterious, and vanishes again. I think the Torchwood hierarchy is more complicated than any measly medical officer is allowed to know."

"That reminds me of when we first got here. Captain Nielsen said you have a morgue down there? Really?"

Steve nodded. "I've got my lab which we'll occasionally use for purposes like that, but the morgue is Artie's territory. He's pretty complicated in that regard."

"So…should I call you Dr. Jinks?" Myka asked. She watched as Pete chased Claudia around a street corner.

"I'm not an actual doctor, funnily enough. This was the vacant position when they recruited me, and I was pre-med before giving medical school a very brief shot, so I've kind of learned on the job." He smiled and shrugged. "Don't expect me to perform any surgery but I can do just about anything Torchwood needs me to do. Mostly taking a look at bodies and figuring out which extraterrestrial freak was responsible."

"Oh, that's interesting. I guess if you can do the job, there's no need for a degree, right? I was pre-med too. Then I was pre-law, and then somehow I ended up in the Secret Service." She left out the countless other majors she had flirted with before finally picking a solid goal. Myka's college experience had been a supremely busy one.

"That's an impressive trajectory," he said. "It's funny how you can start off for one thing and end up somewhere so different."

"Yeah, I don't think I ever took Flying in a Time Machine with an Alien 101," she said, a dry smile curving her lips.

He chuckled. "So what's the Doctor like? We've all heard about her but only in passing."

Myka exhaled as she pondered that. "That's the trickiest question I've ever been asked. She's…well, she's unusual. Unconventional."

"I know all about unconventional. I work for an organization that pushes aliens out of Cardiff, and I've even died doing it," he said, the jest in his tone fading when Myka's eyes widened.

"What do you mean, you've died?"

"I mean I've literally died once. But it's okay, don't look so bothered! Artie used a resurrection gauntlet on me." He looked amused at the shock on her face. "It wasn't very fun for a while. It was hell, actually, but that problem's long resolved thanks to our girl genius up there." He nodded towards the corner Claudia had already turned, though he didn't elaborate on the circumstances. "It's a pretty intense job."

"No kidding."

"Artie's died and come back to us too. He didn't need the gauntlet, though. That's what I meant when he said he was a little complicated."

Myka decided this was one of those things where trying to understand it was beyond her. Somehow those mysterious things, which had been practically nonexistent for most of her life, were suddenly commonplace. Resurrection was fine in stories, but it gave her the shivers when it became part of reality. "Sounds like the Doctor."

"Well, he did say that he and the Doctor go _way_ back. I don't know how long that means, but with the two of them…."

"Unbelievable," Myka sighed. She and Steve shared a smile. "It's a crazy world, isn't it?"

"It sure is."

They walked on in a comfortable silence. Steve was a good guy, Myka thought. He seemed so normal for someone who worked at Torchwood, and yet he talked about returning from death. She couldn't quite get her finger on the pulse of Torchwood yet; she didn't think she'd be figuring it out any time soon.

A sudden shout came from around the corner. It was Claudia, sounding panicked. Myka and Steve's conversation instantly fell to the wayside, and they sprinted down the street, skidding as they turned the corner. They rushed down the sidewalk at a breakneck pace, meeting Claudia and Pete at the far end of the street. Somehow, in their jumps into puddles and their chases, Pete and Claudia had ended up farther ahead than Myka had expected.

"What is it?" Myka gasped once they finally caught up. "Are you guys okay?" Steve bent over, hands on his knees, but he managed to echo Myka's question.

"Oh, yeah," Claudia said. "We're totally fine."

"We just got bored of waiting," Pete added.

"C'mon, we don't have time for you two to be so slow," Claudia said. She grabbed Steve, pulling him down the street, chattering away as he

Pete clapped Myka on the back. "Keep it moving, Bering," he said, his voice dramatically gruff.

She narrowed her eyes. "I'm going to shoot you with your lightning gun, Lattimer."


	12. 12: Bag It

"Do we have any idea where to start, or are we going to aimlessly and uselessly walk around?" Myka asked, trudging through the rainy streets beside Pete. Steve and Claudia walked two steps ahead of them. Being sent off to look for mundane items imbued with supernatural powers, as strange a situation as it was, felt like an odd demotion, a rejection of sorts. The Doctor was back at the Hub and here she was, on the streets with Pete. The terrible weather didn't help matters. While she'd enjoyed talking to Steve, it was something that could have been done anywhere but a cold, rainy street.

He snickered at the irritation in her voice. "Cheer up; you get to spend time with me. Do you want to go get tacos first?"

"First of all, I don't think Cardiff is known for great tacos. And second of all, we have a job to do. The sooner it's over, the better. I will _not_ be dealing with any of your childishness today."

He covered his mouth in a vain effort to hide his laughter. "One, there is no such thing as a not-great taco. And two, has anyone ever mentioned that you look like a crazy giraffe when you're mad?"

"You are such a child! It has been so nice not having to deal with you!" She sped up, falling into line next to Claudia. The younger woman looked up, and Myka nodded a strained hello. "Hey. Sorry, I know it must be strange having me along and joining your team here."

Claudia shrugged. She was an immensely likable young woman, and when she smiled, Myka smiled back. "No, it's nice. We've all heard that you're a great agent."

"Yeah," Steve agreed, "we don't hold running out against you."

"Thanks." She sighed and shoved her hands deeper in her pockets. It seemed to get colder every second. "So do we have a plan, other than Pete's terrible idea of getting tacos?"

"What we usually do is look for things that don't fit," Steve explained, "like anything out of place or strange. I figure that'll work just as well here."

Myka nodded. "Okay. So how do we find things like that if we're just wandering the streets?"

Before anyone could answer, a shout rang out from above them and a table came flying through a window, followed by a shower of broken glass.

"Ah," Myka said. "I see."

"Last one up is a loser!" Pete shouted, and Claudia took off after him, entering the building and dashing up the stairs.

Steve and Myka exchanged a look and a tired smile. They followed the other two at a much slower pace. When they reached the fourth floor, the one that was now lacking a chair, Pete and Claudia were already knocking on a closed door.

"Fox Mulder, FBI Special Agent!" Pete shouted, rapping on the door.

"Dude, I think they have The X-Files in Wales too," Claudia said.

Pete rubbed his chin in consideration before deciding on a second option. "Dale Cooper, FBI Special Agent! Let us in!"

"I don't think the names are the issue," Steve said, "I think the issue is that you're claiming to be from the FBI…in Cardiff."

"No, I think the issue is that you're standing here discussing which fictional character you want to be while someone is probably in serious trouble in that room." Myka silenced them all, as authoritative as she had always been. It was enough to make a team she had no connection to listen when she spoke, and she couldn't help a surge of pride. The Doctor never made her feel inferior, but she was as close as Myka had come to an equal, and there was something nice about being at the top again. She couldn't resist barking out the order: "Stop being foolish and get us in there."

Pete, giving up on his best efforts to be an imaginary FBI agent, broke the cheap door down easily, and the four of them poured into the room.

A young man in a tattered flannel shirt and a faded pair of jeans stood in the room, wrestling with a heavy armchair. He had headphones on and the shrieking of guitars was clearly audible through them.

"I think he's trying to throw that chair out the window too," Claudia said. She stood arms akimbo, staring at the oblivious man.

"That appears to be the case," Steve agreed.

"Yo! Dude!" Pete shouted. When there was no reaction, he began to jump up and down in a ridiculous dance that made Claudia giggle and earned a grin from Steve.

Myka stared at Pete for several seconds as he made a fool of himself, but she finally couldn't stand it any longer. In three long strides, she was beside the young man, and she ripped off the headphones. They flew loose into her hands; they hadn't been connected to anything but the inside of his pocket. "We need to talk!" she shouted.

The man looked at her, wide-eyed and flushed, for a moment. Then he swayed and collapsed, Pete leaping and catching him an inch from the floor.

Myka looked at the headphones in her hands and then at the man on the floor. She wound the cord around the headphones and pressed them into Steve's waiting hands. "Okay. Wow. That was really easy." A spark ran through her when she released the headphones and she shivered. They were definitely not normal.

"I liked the music, though! I wonder what it was." Pete lifted the headphones as if he was about to put them on. Myka immediately smacked them out of his hands. He made a face at her, leaning down to pick them up. This time he put on one of the purple gloves before he touched the headphones. "Nice to have you back, Mykes."

"Nice to be back, Pete." In that moment, smiling with adrenaline and victory, enjoying her squabbling with Pete more than she would ever admit to, she meant it.

Pete dropped the headphones into the silver bag Claudia handed him. A shower of sparks shot up, and Claudia took the bag from him, dropping it into her backpack.

"Item one, neutralized," she said with a triumphant fist-pump. "Let's go grab another."

"We got lucky with this one," Myka said, frowning. "It might not be as easy to find another."

Pete dragged the unconscious man across the room, pulling him up onto an overstuffed couch. "Then we'd better start looking. Keep an eye open for weirdness."

Steve held the door open, and they proceeded out into the hall. Claudia, bright-eyed and chatty, kept Myka engaged with a description of some of the different technology they had back at the Hub. The Rift Manipulator was fascinating and prompted a further discussion of Torchwood's goals, the Ghost Machine sounded too strange to be real, and the revelation that Claudia used a "Gizmo" similar to the Doctor's screwdriver was interesting. But a data scanner able to digitize and translate books was the most appealing to Myka. She made a mental note to ask the Doctor about getting her hands on something like that.

"Hey, nerds!" Pete shouted, hands cupped around his mouth as he walked backwards. "I think we found something!"

Myka and Claudia caught up to the men. Pete pointed at a long storefront window—or the remnants of a window. Glass covered the ground, and shards jutted out all around the frame. There was no blood visible on the glass, but it was too wet and dark outside to be certain.

"Have you checked the door? We need to get inside," Myka said.

Pete fumbled with the door handle, but it was firmly locked. "Luckily we've been given a nice way inside," he pointed out, and before Myka could object, he climbed in over the broken glass. She frowned and followed him cautiously.

Signs in the room revealed it as a bakery. With that realization, Pete immediately went to the counter, and he stuck a Danish in his mouth before gathering two handfuls of pastries.

"Pete," Myka complained. He mumbled through his mouthful of pastry.

"It's the middle of the day. Why isn't anyone here?" Claudia asked.

"Well, the owner must have been here earlier if the counters are stocked. But it's definitely abandoned now."

Steve bent down to study the glass on the ground. He pulled out a cell phone and snapped a quick photo of the broken window. "For our records," he said to Myka's inquiring glance. "We need to find the vandal. I don't think he or she came in. Looks like they broke the window and left."

Myka tapped her fingers together as she considered that. "Where do we find our hit-and-run window smasher?"

As if in answer to her question, the sound of shattering glass rang out, barely audible and far away.

"I heard glass break!"

"Glory glory hallelujah," Claudia exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "Today is the easiest day at work ever!"

This time they left through the door. Pete shoved his pastries into his pockets as they strode down the street despite the revolted noises his three companions made.

"Dude," Claudia said. He grinned, unabashed, and licked the sugar off his fingers.

"It's this way, I think," Myka said, guiding them to the left. She was proved correct: They turned the corner to be greeted by a figure smashing another large window with a baseball bat.

"Put your hands up," Pete shouted as they approached, seamlessly switching from hungry goofball to competent agent in the easy way that would never cease to bewilder Myka. He drew his electric gun and pointed it at their target.

The figure turned, revealing herself as a teenage girl. She was pale as a ghost in the rain.

"We're here to help you," Myka said. She stepped closer, raising her empty hands. Her voice was soft, calculated to comfort. "Let us help you, okay?"

For a moment, she thought she had succeeded. The girl took a hesitant step towards her, lowering the bat. Then a switch flipped in her and she spun, busting down the remaining window before she ran down the street, surprisingly fast. There was a whole lot of easily-averted running going on lately, Myka thought. Surely it had to end sometime.

But not today. Myka and the Torchwood agents took off after the girl. When the girl turned sharply and ran through an open door, though, she stumbled on the stairs.

Pete fired the gun then, and a bolt of electricity flew past Myka to send the girl to the ground. The baseball bat slipped from limp fingers and bumped down to the bottom of the stairs.

"Is she dead?" Myka demanded, hurrying to the body and steadying the girl before she slid any further down the stairs. She flipped the girl over, feeling her wrist for a pulse. She found it.

"No, it just stuns. We can crank it up and probably kill someone but stunning's better. It results in some memory-loss, too."

"I need one of those," Myka said, admiring the weapon. She wished the Doctor wasn't so dramatically anti-gun. There was nothing handier than a gun in an emergency, whether it fit a Time Lord's moral code or not.

"There's no way that bat's fitting in one of our baggies," Claudia said, snapping on a purple glove. She poked the handle of the bat into a bag, but no sparks came from it this time. "We can't do anything with this."

A silent moment of frustration passed as they considered their next option. Claudia tried putting the other end of the bat in the bag. Nothing. She tried the handle again. Still nothing.

"Maybe it's not the bat." Myka patted the girl's pockets, feeling for any other item that could have caused the girl to go after the windows so viciously. When her fingers brushed against the girl's belt, a sharp "Oh!" flew from her. She hesitated before setting her fingers on the belt again. This time she was confident it was the belt that caused the sudden, strange flow of rage in her. She was only barely able to pull her hand away. "I think I found it."

Claudia stepped in, putting on the second glove and kneeling and unbuckling the girl's belt with her gloved hands. It was black leather covered in rows of silvery studs. Claudia held it up appreciatively. "It's kind of cute, isn't it?"

Steve crinkled his nose. "In a tween kind of way. C'mon, Claud, drop it in the bag." Into the bag it went, with a flurry of sparks. Claudia sealed the bag and dropped it into her backpack to join the headphones.

"It's fun! Not tween," Claudia sniffed. "Just because you're the resident gay dude doesn't make you the resident fashion expert too. I mean, look at what you're wearing now! You look more like a grandpa than Artie does."

"This outfit is practical and comfortable!"

"Myka, you're wearing a cute outfit. Tell Steve that I am way better at fashion than him!"

Myka considered Steve's sloppy thermal shirt and loose jeans and Claudia's gaudy top and vest. She wouldn't particularly want either of them dressing her, but to be fair, clothing wasn't something she put much thought into. "Um…you both look more stylish than Pete," she offered.

Pete elbowed Myka. "Hey, don't contribute to them stealing our shtick. We're supposed to be the adorable bickering partners."

She rolled her eyes, but she still smiled. Her other bickering partner was back at the Hub waiting on them, though, and she wasn't interested in delaying her return any longer than necessary. "Alright, alright. Fun time is over, guys. We need to keep moving. Time is of the essence, right?"

Claudia stuck her tongue out at Steve, who stuck his out at her in return. Pete walked down the stairs backwards, bragging loudly about that skill as he did so. Smiles were exchanged between the entire group, confident and proud. They were a team, if only for one afternoon, Myka realized, and in that moment, she felt at home.


	13. 13: And Tag It

"Wow," Pete joked, "what a lame effort at destroying the world. This is so easy. I could do this all day."

The others nodded their agreement. So far, containing these objects was a matter of walking in and picking them up. Their task of collection was simply an elaborate game of fetch. If busted windows were the best the aliens could manage, it wasn't going to be a very hard day.

But then they pushed the heavy door open and exited the building. Dark smoke and licking flames rose from down the street, sirens began, and screams rang out from a nearby building. The four stared in disbelief at the chaos that had erupted in the streets of Cardiff in a matter of seconds. Slowly, the other three turned to stare at Pete.

"Oops," he said.

Claudia groaned and wrapped her arms about herself. "This just got way, way harder."

"We'll split up," Steve decided. "Claud, you come with me, and Pete and Myka, you two can go together."

"We'll take the fire and you guys can have the screamers. C'mon, Jinksy!" Claudia darted down the street, Steve following at a measured pace.

Pete rubbed his hands together and grinned at Myka, doing his best to prompt a laugh. "Fun! Screamers!"

She frowned, ignoring his efforts. "Should we really just send off the medic and the IT girl by themselves?"

"You mean the two people most experienced with stopping aliens? Just because they don't get to play with fun guns back at the Hub all day like me doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing in the field. C'mon, let's git 'er done."

He drawled the last line, and that time Myka couldn't help but smile.

The screaming came through the open window of an apartment further down the street, and they moved swiftly in that direction. As they jogged up the stairs, Myka's fingers went to the gun on her hip. It was nice to have a weapon again, and with the sounds coming from their destination, she was fairly confident it was going to come in handy.

They stopped on either side of the door, exchanging a glance. Myka lifted her hand to rap on the door, but this time, the scream of a child rang out. Pete couldn't wait. He burst through the door, Myka following a step behind with her gun drawn.

Two bodies already lay on the floor, clothing torn and bloodied. Myka cursed faintly, breath torn from her lungs. She could sense Pete tense up beside her. Only a young man and a little girl, no more than five or six, still stood. Blood coated the man's hands. Myka pushed back a wave of disgust and let familiar adrenaline take over.

"We are armed. Step away from the child and put your hands behind your head," she shouted.

The man turned to face her. He wiped a hand on his cheek, leaving behind a slick streak. In his other hand, he held a serrated kitchen knife. When he stepped towards Myka, angered and distracted, Pete was able to lunge across the room and sweep the girl up into his arms.

Pete grunted as he lifted the little girl and at that, the man spun with a wordless roar to pursue them. Pete stumbled across the room, setting the girl against the wall behind him as he fumbled for his gun. Eyes locked on Pete and the child, the man didn't notice Myka when he came tearing past her. It was a massive mistake.

She smashed him in the head with the butt of her gun. He crumpled, out cold.

It was as simple as smacking a Cyberman with gold, yet standing in this dirty apartment with rain pounding outside and bodies strewn on the floor was so painfully _real_. There was no sheen here. She took a deep, shuddery breath. It was all too familiar.

"I bet it's the knife," Pete said. "It's gotta be the knife."

Myka was a step ahead of him, glove already on as she bent over the body. Carefully, she withdrew the knife from his hand. It entered the silver bag in a shower of sparks.

A quick check revealed that one of the people on the floor, a middle-aged man, was already dead, likely from blood loss. The woman beside him still breathed shallowly, clinging on to life. Parents, she guessed. There was no sign of struggle at the door, no sign of a forced invasion. She looked at the young man on the floor, probably in his late teens, and wondered if a son had just killed his father.

"Pete!" Myka said, voice cracking, stepping away from the bodies, "Pete, we need to get this woman and the man I hit to a hospital immediately, and we need to get that child away from this." Her heart broke for the family as she crossed the disaster of a living room.

Pete was crouched in front of the television, gazing wide-eyed at the news. The child huddled silently beside him. "Mykes, look," he whispered.

A newsanchor spoke briefly before the screen changed to footage of a burning home, but the television was muted and the words went unheard. Myka stared at the screen. The burning house flickered to a car pile-up in the highway. The car wreck shifted to looters in the streets. The looters changed to a man jumping from a bridge, and the jumper changed to a flooded street. Locations were listed along the bottom. London. New York. Sydney. The list went on.

She turned, breath caught in her throat, to Pete.

"That escalated quickly." He tried to smile and speak in an affected voice, but it failed him.

Even without the circumstances, Myka wouldn't have cared about whatever Pete was referencing, and now, she had no patience for it. She shook her head sharply. "Pete, be serious. This is really severe. This is too much for Torchwood."

"Yeah, no kidding. Is this…is this the kind of thing the Doctor does? Can she fix this?"

Myka shook her head. "I don't know. I hope so." The Doctor's stories had included some terrible situations. But she couldn't remember one like this.

"Well, we'd better get back to Torchwood and send you two off to take down the aliens or whatever it is you're doing," he said, pushing himself to his feet. His phone beeped with a text message, and he checked it quickly. "Claud and Jinks are already on their way back. Listen, I'll deal with things here and get the kid somewhere. You get back there and save the world, okay?"

"Pete—"

"No time for goodbye! Get going, you've got things to do."

She squeezed his shoulder in a silent farewell. She tore down the stairs and out the door, faltering for a second as she stepped into chaotic streets, but there was no time for distraction. The plaza wasn't far, with their search nearly moving them back in a circle, but she was almost grateful for the freezing rain keeping her cool as she jogged, and she was short of breath when she knocked on the door of the tourism office.

Leena greeted her, urging her to move quickly, and soon she was back inside the Hub. Steve and Claudia had beaten her there. Steve was seated at a computer, frowning and pounding away on the keys; Claudia was chatting to the Doctor, and neither of them looked particularly phased by the situation. Captain Nielsen glared at a stack of paper, flipping through the sheets.

"Hey," Myka said.

"You're late," the Doctor commented, breaking away from her talk with Claudia, serious once more. Her hands were folded behind her back. "If your report matches that of Ms. Donovan and Mr. Jinks, things are not good out there."

She fell into a chair wearily, leaning back. "Things are really, really bad out there. Pete had to get some victims to the hospital. I left the items we found with him, but I don't think we even got near the worst of it."

"Arthur and I have looked over a lighter that they brought back and it really is fascinating. I don't know how it was done. I'd really love to take a look at it and puzzle this out—" She caught herself. "But I suppose that's a secondary concern. We need to deal with this Federation right away before anything else bad happens."

The words were final, and Myka felt a tremor go through her. This was it. This was exactly what she'd dreaded when the Doctor had first extended her invitation.

And yet, would it not have happened anyway? Someone had to work against it. Maybe it was meant to be her. The argument with herself, a stubborn battle for the balance of rationality and passion, faded into background noise once more.

Myka rose from the chair, but before she could head to the door, Captain Nielsen caught her eye and beckoned her over. He spoke softly, words for her ears alone. "Agent Bering, if you want a position at Torchwood, we still have one reserved for you."

It was tempting. Pete, for all his immaturity, was a good partner, as he had proven today; Claudia and Steve had been nothing but warm and welcoming; Torchwood was an important organization that did good work, clearly, and there was so much she could learn from them; and Cardiff was a fine city. Torchwood was dangerous, but no more so than continuing to travel with the Doctor. Logically, Myka knew it was an offer she shouldn't pass up.

But then the Doctor laughed from across the room, and Myka's gaze fell on her. Her head was thrown back in delight, amused at something Claudia had said—again seemingly above the gravitas of the situation in an uncomfortably alien way. The younger woman gazed at the Doctor, looking giddy just to be talking to the Time Lord. Myka remembered how often she had laughed since she had joined the Doctor, and she remembered how rarely she had laughed before. How could you choose between traveling time and space and anything else?

"I'm sorry," she said, helpless. He was so kind, so sincere, but: "It's really not an option."

He understood, empathy evident in his face. "Of course. Just give us a call if you want to come back. We'll keep a spot for you. There's nothing wrong with a backup plan, right?"

Myka nodded. "Thank you. I'll keep it in mind," she said, with no intention of keeping it in mind. She hesitated, and then voiced the question that had been in the back of her mind all day: "Captain Nielsen, what did you mean when you said the Doctor needed to be extra careful on this regeneration?"

"You don't know?" When she shook her head, he looked genuinely surprised. "This is his—er, her—last regeneration, if I recall correctly. The Doctor's only got thirteen of them."

"But she said—" Myka faltered, her memory conflicting with the new information. "She said _I_ needed to be more careful, because she could regenerate."

Captain Nielsen sighed. "Yes, that does sound like her. Well, don't fret too much. It's taken her well over a thousand years to get through the first twelve. Come on, she's waiting."

"Right, right." Myka smiled at him, distracted but earnest, and crossed the room to the Doctor's side. The Doctor was bidding farewell to Claudia, absolutely beaming as she shook the younger woman's hand.

"Brilliant meeting you, Ms. Donovan. You're full of interesting ideas and I think we'll have to stay in touch. Maybe you can help me tinker with the TARDIS sometime. She's dearly in need of a tune-up."

Claudia still looked as if she was about to faint, though she hadn't dropped another mug yet. "No way! Yeah, I would love to! I, uh, I'll be brainstorming that while you guys are gone!"

"No," Captain Nielsen said firmly, weariness tempered by affection, "you'll be focusing on stopping alien technology from destroying the world."

"That too," Claudia agreed.

The Doctor and Myka finished their farewells with Steve, Claudia, and Artie, finally excusing themselves and making for the exit. There was a bounce in the Doctor's step that Myka decided was based entirely on a boosted ego from Claudia's adoration, but it was hard to hold it against her.

"Hey, Mykes?"

Pete stepped through the door, just arriving, with discomfort written across his face. Myka waved the Doctor on, smiling faintly at Pete.

"You moved quickly. Is everyone okay?"

"I did my best but I don't think anywhere is super safe right now." He shrugged. It was the answer she had expected. It was disappointing, but she understood.

Myka nodded. "At least you got back in time to say goodbye after all."

"No way, I hate goodbyes. I'm not saying bye. I, um, I wanted to remind you about my crazy weird vibe."

"I can't…I can't do anything about it." She shook her head, lost for any other response. There was no going back now. Pete might not be fond of the Doctor, but she couldn't refuse to go now that the planet hung in the balance. Even then, though, the new realization provided by Captain Nielsen that the Doctor had lied to her needled in the back of Myka's mind. But there was nothing to be done.

"Just keep it in mind! I don't care what you do, I know you could probably kick the ass of anyone in the galaxy, but just be careful."

"I'll be careful," she promised. "When am I ever not?"

His old grin finally returned. "Fair point. For a second I forgot you were a terrible uptight stickler. Okay. I better see you again soon."

She nodded, in agreement and in parting, but he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder before she could turn.

He let a long moment of silence hang between them before he finally spoke. His voice dropped and his gaze was deadly serious. "And remember, Mykes…the Force will be with you, always."

"Thanks, Yoda," she told him, with a last wry smile before she turned and followed the Doctor through the exit. She bid farewell to Leena as they exited through the tourist center, and soon she and the Doctor were crossing the plaza and boarding the TARDIS.

Pete stood there long after, frowning at the closed door as a slew of emotions battled it out. Finally, hands cupped to his mouth, shouting, he said goodbye in the best way he knew how:

"That's Obi-Wan, not Yoda! What kind of childhood did you _have_?"


	14. 14: In Which Things Go Wrong

Myka shut the TARDIS door and joined the Doctor at the console. The Doctor was already bent over a screen, fingers tapping away wildly. A hologram popped up of what Myka supposed must be the Federation's ship. It was a massive thing, sleek, grey, and entirely fitting of an alien council referring to themselves as the Federation (to Myka, the whole thing reeked of dramatics, and there was little she liked less). It was much more of a stereotypical spaceship than the blue box they stood in.

"Is your plan just to pop up on the ship?"

The Doctor crossed her arms. "I'm still waiting to hear a better one from someone else. But honestly, Myka, things haven't gone too poorly yet. Have a little faith."

Myka sighed. "I don't know, showing up in the middle of their ship seems faulty."

"We'll be subtle. Sneaky. Covert." The Doctor pulled a lever and the noise of the TARDIS—something that was far from subtle, sneaky, and covert—began.

The flight of the TARDIS already felt so familiar. Myka, who had always insisted on consistency over change, had somehow adapted to this change without any struggle. The lights of the console danced across the Doctor's face, light and shadow playing over her high cheekbones and a glimmer entering her dark eyes. She was so very human and so very alien, peculiar and maddening in precisely the way Myka usually detested but with an energy that pushed her past Myka's barriers. As Myka studied her, taking her in for the brief duration of their flight, her worry over their shaky plan faded into contentment. Right now, Earth wasn't any safer than space, and on Earth, she wouldn't have the Doctor there.

"Here we are," the Doctor said, her voice breaking into Myka's thoughts. "Ready to save the day again?"

"Absolutely," Myka said. Before following her out of the TARDIS, she realized Pete's loaned gun was still on her hip; the Doctor hadn't noticed, and Myka decided to keep it that way. She liked the knowledge that it was there. She might not have a sonic screwdriver, but she did have tools of her trade too. She grabbed her coat from where she'd thrown it over the railing and slipped into it as she joined the Doctor.

"So now what's the plan?"

"Find a computer, see if we can deactivate things on Earth, crash their computers, hop back on the TARDIS, leave them bumbling through space indefinitely. Simple and to the point, no?"

"Isn't that condemning them all?" Myka asked, shooting her a sideways glance. They crept down the bare steel corridor.

"Condemn? Nonsense. They'll lose authority, not their lives. I assure you that they should be able to live out their days quite comfortably on this hulking ship."

"That's not a punishment at all, then. Doctor, people were dying in Cardiff. People are dying all over."

"I understand that, but—" The Doctor paused, tilting her head as she frowned at Myka. "Yes, well. Don't tempt me. Look, there's a door." The abrupt switch distracted Myka, and the Doctor was opening the unlocked door before she could consider the situation any further.

"You are the worst at caution," Myka hissed. To her relief, the room they entered was as empty as the hall.

The Doctor pointed triumphantly at a screen embedded in the wall. "Target sighted. There's a computer for us."

Myka crossed her arms, nervous. She felt exposed here, unprepared. "Hurry up and do whatever it is you need to do." After a pause, she added: "What _is_ it that you need to do anyway?"

"Well, I…I'm looking for an off switch, I suppose," the Doctor said, rubbing her neck sheepishly when Myka pinned her with a frown. "Surely there's a way to disable transmissions from the ship."

"Maybe it's not an issue of transmissions. Maybe they've got some kind of base on Earth they're sending things out of."

The Doctor crinkled her nose at that. "You should have raised that point before. But no, surely this is right, isn't it?" She bit her lip as she considered it, searching for the justification of their actions. "It's always best to head to the source. They wouldn't be so close to Earth if that wasn't the case, and at any rate, we'll glean something interesting here."

The logic made sense, and Myka deferred to experience. "Do it quickly, then. I feel like we're just waiting for someone to walk in and find us."

"It'll be easy," the Doctor assured her.

The second the Doctor touched the screen, the ship erupted in a flurry of red lights and sirens. A chorus of audible shouts, near to them, rang clear.

"Oh. Bollocks. That did not work as I intended."

Myka groaned. "Time to run?"

"Time to run."

But they were barely through the door when a large, armored alien, identical to their pursuers from the canyon planet, came pounding down the corridor and stopped them. He drew a gun, a bulky black affair that crackled with a charge, though he did not point it at them, and he barked out his command: "Halt!"

The Doctor obeyed, instantly lifting her hands in submission. If Myka had been paying attention, she would have noticed the dark glint in the Doctor's eyes, or the way she tensed, feet planted so lightly on the floor, shifting so Myka was half-hidden behind her; she should have realized there was no way the Doctor would give up that easily. There was no excuse for missing those signs.

Yet miss them she did. Before she thought, she had drawn the gun Pete had given her. "Back down!" she shouted, weapon aimed squarely at the alien's head.

"Myka!" The Doctor's admonishment was sharp, but it was all but drowned out by the alien's bellow.

"Human!"

Myka fired—and the alien chuckled, unscathed. In one long stride, he was able to knock the gun from her hands. Myka paled as the enormity of her mistake dawned on her. She had brought a knife to a gun show, she realized, the irony of the idiom not lost on her.

"Quaint," he grunted, kicked the weapon across the hall. "Cute." He reached into his pocket. "Hold still."

Seconds later, he was giving the rope that snaked around them one last tug. "I'll be back," he told them, dusting his hands as he walked away. Myka and the Doctor were bound together by a radiant neon blue cord that bristled with electricity. Any squirming resulted in a sharp sting.

"This seems unnecessary!" the Doctor shouted after the alien.

"Handcuffs would have worked!" Myka added, though a touch halfheartedly, distracted by the closeness and irritated by that distraction.

Their cries were in vain. They stood alone in the middle of the hallway, forced against each other by the rope, unable to move from their spot. Myka could feel the pounding of the Doctor's hearts; she could feel every breath the other woman took. It was enough for her to tell that the Doctor was furious.

The silence between them was brief. The Doctor twisted to try and look at Myka, their binds tightening with a painful shock. "I cannot _believe_ that you brought a gun—and that you drew it on him!"

"I can't believe you triggered their security system," Myka deflected.

"Yes, I let them know we were here and you infuriated them! So equivalent!'

"Don't put it all on me!"

"Then don't be rude!"

They stared at each other, jaws tight and eyes narrowed. The tension was only momentary, though, and soon the Doctor sighed and, hands held too tight by their bonds for a gesture of reassurance or apology, leaned her head against Myka's shoulder .

"I did warn you about guns."

Myka frowned, hearkening back to that. "I thought you just meant you didn't like violence."

The Doctor nodded slightly, looking up at her. "There's that. And the fact that a nonthreatening profile is often very helpful. I could have talked us out of it, you know."

"Do you think there's any way out of this?"

"The cord?" She looked doubtful. "We can try, but I think it will be unpleasant."

Another round of struggling with the rope left them both gasping for air as a current shot through them. That was the moment when their captor returned, followed by another of its species and a compact alien with the head of a rhinoceros. One of the armored aliens stepped forward and released Myka and the Doctor from their too-tight bonds, adjusting it so only their wrists were found together.

"You should have held still," it grunted. In retrospect, he did have a point, Myka supposed.

The rhinoceros-headed alien stepped forward, arms crossed gravely, but before it could speak, the Doctor butted in.

"Hello! How funny it is to see a Judoon here, because, in case you hadn't heard, I am the Doctor, and your people and I have a firm agreement stating that Earth is out of your jurisdiction! Isn't that interesting?"

"The Doctor." He spoke slowly, in a deep, gravelly voice. "Interesting. Situations change, Doctor. We are going to resolve the Earth question once and for all, and we do not need your interference. You and this human shall both be punished for your intrusion."

"Mm, no, I'd really rather not be. My friend and I will skip the punishment. We'll be leaving now, if you'd be so kind as to release us."

"Very funny," the Judoon said, voice flat.

"What are we going to do with them?" queried one of the large aliens.

"Kill them," came the answer. Myka stiffened, and she felt the Doctor go equally tight beside her.

"I demand to speak to the Federation," the Doctor snapped, all humor gone from her voice. "That is my _right_, as I'm sure you're all aware. It is my right under Convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation."

The Judoon chuckled, resting his hands on his hips. "What Shadow Proclamation, Doctor? I don't know where you've been, but I think you'll find there's a new set of rules in the galaxy these days—one determined by the Federation."  
The Doctor began to speak, but she stumbled on her words, clearly shocked by his words. Paler than usual, she drew a breath and tried again. "If you are eager to uphold any semblance of justice, you will not dismiss such an important right. The Federation must have an equivalent ruling."

Their captors stood silent. The only noise was the soft buzzing of the cord around their wrists.

"Take them to a holding cell," the Judoon finally determined. "1C will work. We will consider the proposal." He turned and receded down the corridor without another word.

"I want to speak now, do you hear me?" the Doctor shouted. "This is unacceptable!" But there was no response to her yells, and she groaned, tipping her head back in frustration. "This is absurd. Absolutely absurd."

One of the armored aliens shoved the Doctor on the shoulder, sending her and Myka both stumbling down the hall. "Let's go."

The Doctor shot him a fiery look. "What _are_ you, anyway? I've never met a creature as hulking and stupid as you lot."

"Watch it," he thundered, shoving her harder this time. The Doctor barely kept her footing.

"Don't provoke them," Myka rebuked her. She grabbed the Doctor's wrist and moved to whisper in her ear. "Act nice and we'll be treated nice. Maybe we'll even get loose."

"I want to speak to them," the Doctor grumbled.

"What?" Myka frowned. She'd assumed that request was a bluff. Surely it couldn't be serious.

Another shove interrupted them. "Keep quiet."

They complied, falling silent as they continued their trek down the corridor. Myka tried to keep track of their path, but soon she was thoroughly lost. The ship was even larger than she'd imagined and the corridors were far more convoluted than seemed practical.

"Here," grunted one of the aliens. A door slid open revealing a small, empty room. The walls and floor were all glistening steel like the rest of the ship. The room was completely barren.

"This really is outlandish," the Doctor said as they were ushered in. The alien ignored her.

"Wait. We will come back for you when they are ready." He looked at the other alien and they chuckled. "Ready to hear you or to kill you."

The door slammed shut, leaving the Doctor and Myka alone. "Hilarious," the Doctor muttered in the direction of the door, belated and bitter.

Their distorted reflections shone in the metal, stretched and misshaped. Myka stared at their images while she spoke. "It'd be easy to lose your mind in here." She shifted uncomfortably.

"Yes, well, I don't think we'll be in here long enough for that. I'm sure they're fairly reasonable."

Myka saw nothing reasonable about an effort to destroy the Earth. The stakes were the highest they had ever been, and her hopes were the lowest they had ever been. She slumped in a seat against the wall, and, after a minute of watching the Doctor pace restlessly, she patted the seat beside her. "Doctor," she called, voice hushed needlessly, "wearing a groove in the floor won't make them come any faster."  
With a rueful smile, the Doctor lowered herself into the offered spot. "I'm just anxious to get this behind us. There's nothing I hate more than waiting on things."

"Well…." Myka trailed off, a list of questions running through her head. If this was going to be the end of her life—the end of her world—she deserved a few answers. Even if they succeeded here, she couldn't keep following the Doctor in blind acceptance. "Then let's talk."


	15. 15: Imprisoned, Again

The Doctor's brow furrowed ever so slightly at the proposition, her dark eyes searching. There was an edge in Myka's tone that nudged her off her mark, and she spoke slowly when she responded. "Yes, let's talk. Nothing I'd enjoy more."

Myka fidgeted, fingers tangling together in nervous habit as she considered where to start. She began with the most recent question, stumbling over the unfamiliar terms. "When you asked that creature with the rhinoceros head—the Judoon?—about the, um, the Shadow Proclamation, I think it was—"

"That's correct," the Doctor murmured. She rested her chin on her hands, a faint frown lingering on her face.

"I've never seen you look as worried as you did when he said the Shadow Proclamation was gone. Why? What was that? Why is that important, and why did he act like you should have known it was gone?"

"Right," the Doctor began, voice measured. "The Shadow Proclamation is an organization that enforced law in the galaxy. When I heard about this Federation, I assumed that perhaps it was…a branch of the Proclamation, or a rogue group that would be dealt with. I never imagined it would have completely usurped the Proclamation."

"And this matters because?" Myka prompted. "Why didn't you know what happened?"

"It matters because they would _never_ have done something like this. This Federation is much more dangerous than the Proclamation, no matter how fervently they claim to have good motives. If Earth can be in this much trouble, then any planet is in danger. As for why I did not know of this development, I—I cannot say." She clenched and unclenched her fists, examining her fingers and refusing to meet Myka's eyes. "I admit that recent years have been a bit…disjointed for me. I suppose it simply slipped past me."

Myka cocked a brow, skeptical. "The overthrow of the system of galactic law slipped past you?"

She rubbed the back of her neck. "Well, when I say disjointed, I mean _very_ disjointed."

"Why?"

"Oh, Myka, are you really going to make me go into this now?"

Myka nodded, not budging in her resolve.

With a sigh, the Doctor inclined her head and continued. "In my eleventh regeneration, I was often a bit…cavalier. I had loved so dearly before, with my heart on my sleeve, so to speak, and when that love was lost, I could not bear the idea of a similar loss. I masked that emotion, and the people I cared for suffered for it. In my twelfth regeneration, I was bitter and angry. I actively pushed people away from me. I…retreated into myself."

She paused then, looking up expectantly as if she hoped to be finished, but Myka gestured for her to continue, biting back a temptation to ask more specifically about that great love.

"But that was not the extreme of my descent. I finally opened myself and allowed myself a friend. When he was…gone, I could not cope. I threw myself into madness. The risks I took, the extremes I went to—that is not a state I ever hope to find myself in again. It was self-destructive. Indeed, it did eventually lead to my death, though the emotional torment was the worst of it. I suppose that during that period, I…may have been oblivious to the happenings of the galaxy." She shrugged, eyes downcast. "That's as much of an explanation as I can give you."

"That was the century in which you were alone," Myka guessed, recalling her earlier statements, and the Doctor nodded.

"This life is fairly new to me. My regeneration was not long before I met you. I…I suppose if I am honest, I have barely begun my retreat from that brink. My visit to Cardiff when we met was my first effort at returning to who I once was." Leaning forward, she squeezed Myka's knee, eyes searching for reassurance. "But I am much better. Don't think poorly of me now that you've heard that."

Myka stared down at the Doctor's hand on her knee, considering the story. She couldn't hold it against her. Myka knew the extremes of sorrow well. Though the lack of awareness might have placed them in greater danger, it was no crime to grieve deeply. Her fingers brushed across the back of the Doctor's hand, and the Doctor twisted her hand up to catch Myka's wrist. "I can tell, you know," Myka said, quiet. "When you aren't looking right at me, when you fall silent and then try to distract me with a silly quip—I can see how you still hurt."

The Doctor absently ran her thumb across Myka's wrist, frowning. "Don't think there's no painful distance in your eyes sometimes, Myka. You and I are alike in many ways. If you are going to pry my story from me, I deserve yours."

"This is a discussion about you, not me," Myka objected, pulling her hand back. That was not a place she was comfortable going, not now, not ever.

"Alright," the Doctor said. She shrugged, leaning back against the wall, and for several minutes, they sat there in silence. Wounds had been bared, perhaps ones too fresh. Both women closed their eyes, lost in thoughts devoted to the other.

The silence did not last, though. Though it was much later when Myka spoke again, she was not out of questions yet.

"Doctor," Myka began haltingly and cautiously, and the Doctor looked up with a faint smile of acknowledgment, "that locket you've always got a hold on…what's in it?"

"Oh." She looked down, as if she was unaware that one hand was curled about the locket. When she raised her eyes to Myka, a shadow had fallen over her face. Carefully, she opened it and held it out, and Myka slid closer to look. "These are all the people I've traveled with that were…lost."

The faces flickered past on the small screen of the locket, each image lingering for several seconds before switching to the next. Myka lost count after twenty, though more came. The minutes passed in silence as she took it in.

"Who's that?"

"Sara."

"What happened to her?"

"She…ah, she aged. Rapidly."

She fell silent again. A minute passed. "And…."

"Adric."

"What happened to him?"

"A terrible crash."

When Myka looked up next, the Doctor answered her before she could ask the questions. "Rose. She was trapped in a parallel universe. There are happy stories too, you know! You could ask me about those!"

Myka only pointed to the next image. "What about her?"

She managed a weak smile. "River. You know, I think you remind me of her most of all."

"Did something terrible happen to each of them?" A pit had formed in Myka's stomach. Her deepest fears were being realized as they spoke.

"Each? No, no…not many deaths."

"What about terrible things other than deaths?"

The locket clicked shut. The Doctor stared at a point over Myka's shoulder, her face full of misery. "Oh, please, Myka, let's not discuss this," she begged.

"What happened to the last person you traveled with? The one that affected you so badly?" Now Myka was pleading as ardently as the Doctor.

"Wolcott. He was lost. Don't make me talk about him." Her fingers clenching the locket were white; her voice was a whisper.

"What's going to happen to _me_?" The moment the words left her mouth, she knew that a line had been crossed. It was too late to take it back, and in that moment, she wouldn't have retracted it even if she could.

"Nothing!" she screamed, sudden tears brightening her eyes and pushing her past her reticence. She grabbed Myka by the shoulders. "Nothing is going to happen to you, I will die before anything happens to you! I spent a century without anyone because I couldn't bear the idea of hurting anyone ever again, and every day, this locket presses against my hearts like an anvil and reminds me of everyone I have ever hurt—all so I will not do it again!" Her voice broke. "I would sacrifice anything to ensure that. Myka, please believe me. Please."

Her voice, raw and heavy with centuries of loss, all stirred up only minutes ago by Myka's first question, cut into Myka like a knife. She paled before the force of the Doctor's shouts. And yet, each of the Doctor's companions must have been promised they would be safe. It was an easy promise to make. It was a hard one to keep. "I'm sorry," Myka whispered, and she meant it, but her hands trembled as the Doctor took them. She had known this would be dangerous, but she had not comprehended the sheer scale. So many faces in the locket. So many people lost.

"I can take you home after this," the Doctor whispered. "If we succeed. You won't have to see me again."

"I don't know." Myka shook her head. "I don't know." She could hear the pain in the Doctor's voice at the thought of being left. She wondered if the Doctor could hear the misery in hers at the same thought.

In her life, so many people she cared for had been taken from her. It would be foolish to throw away someone who meant more to her every hour. But was it worth the risk? Was anything? And yet, if she stepped away now, if she went back to Pete and Torchwood, or if she retreated to D.C. or Colorado, would she ever be able to forgive herself? Would she ever be able to live like that? No one had ever affected her like the Doctor; no one had ever fit with her so perfectly. Perhaps she had found her answer; perhaps something this rare was the only thing that could be worth this risk.

It was not the first time she had struggled with this question, but it was the first time she accepted the answer she had known all along.

So, after a long, painful silence, Myka spoke: "We have a world to save first, right?"

The Doctor nodded.

"You know that my worry isn't because I'm a coward."

"No, of course not! Why, the way you—"

Myka held up a hand to silence her before she could continue. "It's because you lied to me. You gave me a false impression of things. And, back at Torchwood, I talked to Artie and he told me about your regenerations. This is your last one, Doctor. You lied."

The blood drained from the Doctor's face. "Myka," she whispered, but nothing followed.

"I'm an adult. I can handle reality. Cushioning me from the facts is cruel. Yes, I'm scared of things being so…life and death, or life and whatever it is that happens to people who travel with you, but what isn't like that? That's something I can get past. I can learn to deal with that. But…I can't learn to deal with someone willing to lie to me."

She wearily ran a hand through her hair. "Myka, I lie, but it's only for your own protection. It's only a means to an end, never the end."

"It is _never _acceptable. I don't care if you think it's for the better." She leaned forward. "If we keep working together, then you're my partner. I have to be able to trust my partner, no matter what. No matter what," she repeated, fire in her voice. "I don't care how small or large the lie, it's still a betrayal and I can't handle that."

"No, no, you don't understand," the Doctor tried again. "It's not betrayal. It's simply part of a plan that I might not be able to reveal at the time. I've never lied to try and hurt anyone."

Myka wasn't having any of that. "I don't know how well that line's worked before but it won't work on me. You can't view me as…as some sort of inferior child who you have to work around. I'm an adult, a Secret Service agent, and I am perfectly competent. We're equals. If you have a plan, then I will be a conscious part of it, or I will not be part of it at all." Her voice softened. "I'm your partner, Doctor, not an assistant."

"Myka…." She sighed and rubbed her forehead, head in her hands. "Oh, Myka, you really are something else."

She frowned. "I guess you'll have to get used to it. If you want me to stay with you, that is."

"I do. I need you to stay. I need you to yell at me and call me out when I get like this, I think." A rueful smile filled her face, though it was hesitant, without any certainty of where they stood in that moment.

Myka scooted until they were seated side by side, legs and shoulders pressed together, a silent gesture of complete forgiveness. "Good."

The Doctor tapped her fingers on her knee in consideration, before looking to Myka with a lifted brow. The darkness was gone from her face. "You aren't going to say anything about how you need me too? It would only be polite."

She smiled. "I've seen how big your ego can get. I won't be a part of enabling you."

"You really are far too much like River," the Doctor sighed, light back in her eyes. She shook her head. "You know, I used to travel with a child. That was easy. Why can't you honor your elders?"

"Because you're infuriatingly obstinate and you think the universe resolves around you, of course," Myka teased. The Doctor grimaced in mock hurt, and at the same time she shifted her hand so the side of her finger was barely pressed against Myka's hand. That was when Myka knew things were back to being as normal as they ever would be. Her anger was long faded, and that ever-present hint of a smile had returned to the Doctor. Impulsively, she edged her hand to the side, curling her fingers over the Doctor's. "So when are you going to get us out of here?"

She rubbed her cheek, looking almost embarrassed. "Ah, well. Funnily enough, I'm still hoping they'll let us go after I talk to them."

It hadn't been a bluff. Myka jerked away, flying to her feet. "Please don't tell me that, with all this time you've had pacing around the room to come up with a plan, you couldn't come up with a better strategy than that."

"Oh, sit down," the Doctor insisted. "I knew you would react like that. How many times do I have to beg you to trust me? I'm sure they've got the TARDIS locked down so there wouldn't be any use in escaping. We'll talk our way out."

Ignoring the request to sit down, Myka threw her hands up and shifted her weight from foot to foot nervously. "Our lives, not to mention the fate of the whole planet, depend on you talking a bunch of aliens into changing their minds about a decision they are clearly pretty adamant about? Great plan! Perfect plan!"

"Well, I am fairly charismatic. You were absolutely swooning over me as soon as we met."

"I was not!" She spun on her heel to frown at the Doctor.

"The psychic paper would beg to differ."

"Is that—is that what it said the second—no, there isn't time for this!" Cheeks reddening, she turned away again, pacing the room. "We need to come up with a better plan."

"You always say that, and we always use my plan, and it always works," the Doctor complained. She too rose to her feet, and she grabbed Myka's wrist. "Calm down."

Even in her rush of panic over their safety, Myka couldn't let that go. "That's not true. You wouldn't have thought to go to Torchwood if it wasn't for me."

"And we wouldn't be thrown in this cell right now if you hadn't brought that gun!"

"You got us caught before I ever took out the gun!" Her voice rose.

They faced off, both with their hands planted on their hips, each glaring sternly at the other, their prior tension forgotten for this familiar back-and-forth. Then the Doctor laughed. She brushed a hand through her hair. "Ever since you tried to break my back on the TARDIS all the way up to right now, I'm increasingly convinced that you are nearly too much for me."

"You'll have to deal with the fact that I _am_ too much for you," Myka fired back. But then her irritation dissolved and she held her hands up apologetically. "Sorry. I'm so on edge."

"Normally it's the other way around. 'Doctor, this is too much.' Yet you take every opportunity you can to fight me for authority." She shook her head, amused and befuddled. "It's been quite a while since I've dealt with that."

Myka thought about the Doctor's unbelievably massive reserves of guilt, so fragilely shielded. So much responsibility shouldered for so long, so much that the Doctor had been blamed for and had blamed herself for. Myka knew what it was like to blame oneself for terrible things, and though she was loath to remember it, she had nearly let the guilt of her past destroy her. She couldn't imagine a thousand years of that. It would be hell.

It all passed through her head for the thousandth time in a single instant. But she bit back the foolish attempts at comfort she wanted to pour out. "If it's any consolation, you're the only person I've ever had any trouble winning authority from."

"I do so like butting heads," she said, dry. "Only, Myka, I need to make sure you know that—"

The lock clicked. They both fell silent.

It swung open to reveal another one of the armored aliens. "They are waiting for you in the council room, Doctor."

"Wonderful! Let's go." She smiled and offered her arm to Myka. Myka couldn't find any enthusiasm to match that the Doctor expressed, but despite her sense of dread, she stepped forward.

The alien stepped between them. He crossed his arms and turned his back to the Doctor, looking down at Myka. "No. You are staying here. They will send someone else for you soon."

The Doctor peered around his broad silhouette. "No, not a fan of that idea. She'll stay with me."

He pushed the Doctor back. "Am I going to need to carry you again?" Exasperation entered his deep voice.

"I'll be fine," Myka promised, gesturing aimlessly. "It's fine. Fine. Go on."

When the door slammed and they were gone, she slumped down against the wall and buried her face in her hands. She didn't cry or fret. Instead, her mind raced. There had to be _something_ she could do.


End file.
